iClean Your Pipes
by hs42
Summary: Sam and Freddie's adventures in shower repair. Really. "'Face it, Fredifer,' she grinned wickedly as they continued down the stairs. 'Your butt belongs to Momma, and you know it.'" Set sometime in the show near "iGet Pranky."
1. The Gravity of the Situation

**_Disclaimer: _**_I don't own iCarly, nor do I own the characters. I do own liquid soap, though._

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><p>Freddie Benson hummed to himself pleasantly as he opened the laptop on his<em> iCarly<em> studio tech cart and pulled an install DVD from a paper sleeve. It was Saturday morning, and Carly and Spencer were out seeing the new "Prisms of Liquid Soap: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Technology and Hygiene" exhibit at the Seattle Museum of American History. Maybe they took their hand soap a little _too_ seriously, he wondered.

The fact they were gone didn't matter to Freddie; he had a key to the Shays' apartment anyway, and if anything, the lack of anyone else's presence would make upgrading his system to the newest iteration of PearOS Derf, "Feral Tomcat," go much more smoothly. He was anxious to put the new operating system through its paces, especially since it was heralded as a major upgrade that included such vital new features as a faster average boot time of 0.2 seconds, the default relocation of icons from one side of the desktop to the other, and a revamped email client that now offered the option of sending messages with pictures of flowers in the background.

As Freddie placed the install disc into the slot-loading optical drive with a growing sense of giddy expectation, he heard the doorknob to the third-floor studio jiggle. A click quickly followed, and the door swung open to reveal a deteriorated sleep shirt and flannel pants-clad Sam Puckett, who stomped rapidly across the room in his direction.

In no time, she'd grabbed hold of his wrist and pulled him back toward the entrance. "Come on, Fredward, you've got a long day of hard work ahead of you," she growled. Something smelled funny, he noticed.

Finally working his arm free of her iron grip in the doorway, Freddie shouted, "I'm in the middle of something important, Sam!"

"Yeah, like getting two tenths of a second of your life back whenever you start your computer from now on is worth the 45 minutes of it you'll lose by upgrading it," Sam shot back. "You can play with your little Feral Tomcat later; what we've gotta do is more important, mostly 'cause it involves me."

"How'd you know about the tech specs of the new PearOS?" Freddie asked.

Sam fixed him with a blank stare and one raised eyebrow. "Anyway," she continued, ducking the question, "we've got a shower to rebuild."

"What?"

Sam sighed curtly. "My mom's out of town right now, got an appointment with her plastic surgeon in L.A. I think. Before she left to go last night, she somehow broke the plumbing for the shower." Studying the confused look on Freddie's face, she continued, "I thought it best to not ask how."

"Probably a good idea," Freddie answered.

"Darn right . . . So, anyway, this thing needs to be fixed pronto, 'cause I'm starting to smell pretty much – not good," she said, jamming her armpit and the yellowing portion of shirt covering it into his nose and swinging her greasy hair over his head in one swift motion.

"DUDE! That's horrible!" Freddie shouted in disgust as he struggled to break free. "Get off me, man!"

"Now you understand the gravity of the situation," Sam deadpanned.

"Yeah, but, why don't you just get a shower here? And why drag me into this?" Freddie wondered.

"One," Sam replied, "fixing this is probably gonna be a really messy, dirty, sweaty thing to do. Ever see a clean plumber who smells great on the job?"

Freddie admitted she was probably right on that point.

"So what's the point in getting cleaned up first?" she asked rhetorically. "Two," she continued, abruptly sticking her face within an inch of Freddie's nose, "I . . . LOOOOOVE . . . Dragging you into stuff like this. It's probably gonna have to be a two-person job, anyway, and ya see anybody else around here?"

Freddie glanced around the room in the faint hope someone would somehow materialize from thin air. "Besides," Sam continued, "as much as I hate to admit it, you're pretty good at figuring out how to put stuff together, so I could really, MAYBE, uh, use your help." He looked back at Sam, who stared up at his face with an expression that made a complete mockery of wide-eyed innocence. "Come with me?" Sam cranked her demented Hummel figurine vibe up to eleven as she began batting her eyelids. "Pweese, Fweddie?"

It took several seconds before Freddie could extricate himself from the strange sway Sam's twisted angel-on-a-speed-bender appearance held over him. "Oh, alright," Freddie at last grumbled dejectedly. "Where do we have to go?"

Sam made a mental note: _Holy chiz, that crap actually works_, as she replied, "First, hardware store."

They tramped down the stairs together. "You know, I have a life of my own and stuff to do, too," Freddie complained.

"Yeah, right!" Sam snorted. "Face it, Fredifer," she grinned wickedly as they continued down the stairs. "Your butt belongs to Momma, and you know it. Keep movin', grease monkey."

_Why do I let myself get suckered into stuff like this?_ Freddie wondered to himself.

Once at the hardware store, Sam and Freddie were confronted with a dizzying array of pipe parts and shower and tub fixtures hanging from and propped against a long aisle of metal shelving and particle board. "I have no idea what we're gonna need here," Freddie muttered.

"Don't worry 'bout that," Sam answered while grabbing some lengths of pipe and accessories from the aisle, "I have a pretty good idea of what pipes and rings and stuff need replacing, and . . ." She pulled an 8-1/2"x14" piece of legal paper from her pants that was covered both front and back in free-flowing handwriting. ". . . my mom left **very** detailed instructions for exactly the kind of showerhead we'll need."

"What makes the showerhead so important?" Freddie wondered while surveying the surprising variety available. "Just get the simplest one there is, like you're doing with the flange, pipes, solder, and o-rings."

Sam looked at Freddie as though he'd just parachuted in from Mars before shaking her head. "Dude, your innocence scares me sometimes."

She went back to examining the available merchandise. "Let's see," she muttered to herself while glancing from the paper to the aisle and back, "Of course it can't just be wall-mounted – gotta be hand-held, too, so that rules out all these . . . Has to have a massage mode, but with multiple pulse rate settings, different flow rates, different flow patterns, so that just leaves these, and . . ."

The look of comprehension dawning on Freddie's face quickly shifted to one of horror once he fully comprehended what Sam's mom, and apparently Sam as well, had in mind.

Sam reached triumphantly for the last in stock of a particular variety of showerhead. "Oh, yes," she said in a voice Freddie thought sounded strangely similar to Spencer's whenever he watches The Boat Network, "This. Is. PERFECT. I shall call him Squishy and he shall be mine and he shall be my Squishy," Sam cooed as she clutched it reverently.

Upon noticing that Freddie's face had gone ashen, Sam added, "Oh, did I tell you we'll need to hit the drugstore to pick up some tampons, too?"

Freddie's face turned even whiter.

"I'm kidding! Jeez, ya squeamish little boy . . . Come on," she continued while grabbing him by the arm, "I think we'll need a tub of grout and some caulk to be on the safe side. Let's finish up here, head home, and get crackin'."

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><p><em><strong>Author's Note: <strong>This story's set early in the fourth season, probably in the ballpark of _iGet Pranky, _so Sam and Freddie clearly aren't dating yet in this thing. They are, however, definitely headed in that direction, even if neither of them know it yet or would ever admit it at this point. It's an interesting dynamic to try to portray._

_This is also a bit of an experiment – rather than having a fully formed story, __I had just two ideas in mind when starting this thing: the title__, and the notion of building a story around something totally boring and mundane, and trying to make it funny and engrossing._

_And that's why you've somehow found yourself reading the beginning of a multi-chapter story about fixing a shower, of all things. This story will continue with further updates in the future; my only goal is to not bore anybody to death in the process with adventurous tales of caulking._


	2. A Magical Adventure

_**Disclaimer: **I don't own iCarly and I don't own the characters. I do have _Superfuzz Bigmuff Plus Early Singles _by Mudhoney on cassette, though, and it's freakin' awesome._

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><p>The front door of the Puckett residence swung open, and Sam and Freddie entered with bags of plumbing supplies in tow, as well as, much to Freddie's chagrin, a box of tampons from the drugstore.<p>

"It was nice of your mom to leave that wad of cash to buy all the stuff you needed," he said in an attempt to make small talk while carefully averting his eyes from the floral-print box he dangled gingerly at arm's length. Sam insisted he carry it the whole way back from the pharmacy.

"Yeah, every once in a while she comes through," Sam answered. "I'm not gonna pretend I have any idea how she got it, though." She took a moment to admire the remaining wad, which still contained several hundred dollars, before dropping her bags down on the floor and crashing supine onto the tacky avocado green flower emblazoned couch in the middle of the porcelain nicknack stuffed living room.

Sam stretched out across the length of the sofa while Freddie eyed her quizzically. "Well, stop staring like an idiot and hop to it, boy," she commanded while placing her arms behind her head and propping one leg over the top of the couch.

"Uhh . . . Hop to what, exactly?" Freddie asked in confusion while putting his things down on the orange and burnt siena splotch patterned shag carpet.

"The hokey pokey!" Sam replied sarcastically. "Fixing my shower; what'd ya think I was talking about? For a nerd, you can be real slow sometimes," she continued as she closed her eyes.

"Oh, no. No way, Sam! **I'm** here to help **you** out, like you asked me to. That doesn't mean I do everything for you while you take a nap," Freddie huffed.

"Now is not the time to grow a spine, Fredweiner," Sam answered through a yawn. "Get a move on."

"The only 'move on' I'll be getting is out the door unless you get off that sofa," Freddie threatened.

"You wouldn't dare," Sam said drowsily while covering her still closed eyes with the crook of her arm.

"Oh yes I would," he replied defiantly as he picked up the cash, "and I'm taking the wad with me."

Sam sprang to a seated position as her eyelids shot open. _When the hell did he get so assertive?_ she wondered, as she said, "Try that, and you'll need to drain a couple of blood banks when I'm through with you."

"To be through with me, you'll have to catch me first. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. It doesn't matter, because I know you're just bluffing, Puckett," Freddie said as he turned in the doorway and looked straight into her eyes. He continued, with more tenderness in his voice than he intended to convey, "That's okay, 'cause so am I."

Sam swallowed hard and said, "Okay, Freddork. We'll do this together. Is widdle Fweddie done with his widdle hissy fit?" she continued mockingly, unable to let him win this round.

"Are you done trying to make me do all of the work?" He still wasn't backing down.

Sam decided the best she could settle for in this situation was a draw. She looked him directly in the eyes with an inscrutable poker-faced expression. "Deal," she said, holding out her right hand and cracking a smile she hoped didn't look quite as pleasant as it felt.

"Deal," Freddie replied as he clasped his right hand to hers with a wide smile. After a moment shaking hands, Sam suddenly tightened her grip. "OW!" Freddie gasped, "What was that for?"

"Told ya now wasn't the time to grow a spine," Sam laughed. Her expression softened further. "What do you say we go check that plumbing, 'kay?" She picked up all the bags of supplies off the floor and headed for the bathroom. After a moment, Freddie followed her.

Sam opened the bathroom door, and the first thing Freddie noticed as he entered was the horrible odor. "Oh my God!" he croaked. "What **is **that?"

"Had to shut off the water last night," Sam answered matter-of-factly. "Then I had three black bean and brown rice burrito platters, and a couple of Jamaican jerk chicken sandwiches. You're a math dork; add 'em together and you'll get the answer."

"Yeah, but – did you have to let everything waft all night with the seat up and the door closed? And, dude . . . you're a **girl**. What the heck are you doing with the lid up, anyway?" Freddie wondered while breathing through his shirt.

Sam couldn't help but notice that Freddie had, perhaps for the first time, just directly referred to her as a girl to her face. "Seat down's for scaredy-cat wimpy prisses. Goin' with the seat up is a **challenge**. Turns takin' a dump into a magical adventure," she answered without a hint of irony. "Besides, I thought it might irritate you when I dragged you over here this morning."

"Irritate me? My eyes are burning!" Freddie gasped as tears ran down his cheeks.

"Oh, man up," Sam snapped as she closed the cream-colored lid over the seafoam-colored hopper and sprayed some Lysol around the room. "Does baby find that better?" she asked as she stroked his hair with mock concern.

"Getting there," Freddie answered after a moment. He blinked a few times and glanced around the room, now that his vision was beginning to return to normal. The Pucketts' bathroom was the only one he'd ever seen that was carpeted, and it was a feature that he still, after all these years, found incredibly strange and kind of gross. It made the room's décor, which was eccentrically dominated by color clashing rubber ducks and gaggles of glass swans, seem downright normal.

A chunk of the shower wall was knocked out, and the broken pipes were easy to identify. It was no wonder Sam had such an easy time picking out all the necessary replacement parts. There were already several wrenches, putty knives, different varieties of tape, a pile of tiles, and a soldering iron laid out in the tub. A Shop-Vac stood in the corner of the bathroom, and she'd apparently already run it this morning, as the area behind the shower was dry, while the vacuum's tank was full of water. On the rare instances Sam really set her mind to accomplish something, she was usually better prepared and fully capable of doing it better than anyone else, Freddie knew, and sight of the prep work already done in the shower drove that point home for him.

"So what do we do first?" Freddie asked.

"First, music to work to," Sam responded with an impish smile. "How 'bout something romantic?" She disappeared into the hallway, and within seconds "Touch Me I'm Sick" by Mudhoney blasted from her room.

"You call this romantic?" Freddie shouted.

"Well, I figured it was either this or some Laibach, so by comparison, sure, why not?" Sam bellowed back from down the hall.

Mark Arm's voice sneered through the speakers as Sam Puckett reappeared.

_ I feel bad, and I've felt worse._

_ I'm a creep, yeah, and I'm a jerk._

_ Come on_

_ Touch me, I'm sick._

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><p><strong><em>Author's Note: <em>**_Little known fact – the original record single for "Touch Me I'm Sick" had a picture of a toilet on the sleeve, so I figured that makes it totally appropriate bathroom repair music. Plus, Mudhoney was one of the original "grunge" bands from Seattle. _Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden were a bunch of poseurs by comparison.__


	3. Mauled by Bears or Something

**_Disclaimer:_**_ I don't own iCarly, and I don't own the characters. I do, however, get tired of saying it. Speaking of tired, I'm guessing this chapter will be getting some heavy editing soon, since I just wrote it in one quick burst very, very late at night. I apologize in advance, people.  
><em>

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><p>"What do you think we should do first?" Freddie attempted to shout over the din of seminal grunge slagging from Sam's room. He felt it best that they should formulate a systematic plan of attack for taking apart and rebuilding the damaged piping, and so he continued at peak volume, "Maybe we should remove everything from the bottom of the hole in the wall on up, lay out the parts, and set up sort of a triage system organizing the pieces by what's definitely broken, what might be salvageable, what's definitely okay, and borderline cases that don't quite fit into any of the previous categor–"<p>

It was around the time when Freddie uttered the words "triage system" that Sam abruptly spun around to face him, stared him down with a gaze straddling the nebulous border between annoyed and threatening, picked up a large, adjustable pipe wrench in one hand and a hammer in the other, gestured with the hammer as if to say, "Watch this," turned back toward the broken plumbing, and with a roar began furiously pounding away at the damaged section with all her considerable might.

"– Or you could just do that," Freddie murmured. Within seconds, all the previously broken pipes clattered to the tub's floor in a freshly pulverized state.

"This music's kinda loud, Benson! What were you thinkin', cranking it up so much?" Sam bellowed as she sauntered past a thoroughly confused Freddie, out into the hallway and back into her bedroom.

"Hey, uh, I didn't turn it up! Or on! And have you ever considered becoming a drummer for the Blue Man Group?" Freddie shouted after her.

"Only if being an invisible ninja doesn't pan out!" Sam boomed back. The music abruptly stopped, only to be replaced by what sounded like an organ piped in from hell and a man emitting falsetto screeches played at a moderately lower volume.

"What the heck is **this **supposed to be, Puckett?"

"_The Crazy World of Arthur Brown_. It's about time you got yourself a proper musical education, Fredifer," Sam answered as she reemerged into the hallway.

"So now I guess we start trying to put this back together with the new parts, right?" Freddie asked as he surveyed the hole in the shower wall and their bags of supplies.

"No, now we have a race to see who can drink a bottle of engine oil fastest!" Sam snapped sarcastically. "Of course we start putting this together! I don't know if we'll need it or not, so could you plug in the soldering iron so it can heat up in the meantime? And don't put it anywhere stupid that'll burn the place down."

"You know I'm not that stupid, Sam," he responded irritatedly while he reached around her and into the tub for the soldering iron.

"I don't know;" she replied cheerily, "You're still not totally sure whether or not I have a sister, aren't you?"

"Well, uh," was the best answer to that question Freddie could come up with.

Sam picked up a segment of pipe and a metal coupler. "I should just be able to thread these on back here . . . Yup," she said, thinking to herself. "Yeah, I'll need to solder these to make sure they won't leak water behind the wall, then. Is it ready to go soon, Fredalupe?"

"It'll probably need another minute or so to heat up all the way," was Freddie's answer. "I wonder how all this happened," he continued, gesturing at the hole in the wall.

"I'm sure it was my mom doing something crazy and stupid again, probably with another boyfriend of hers," Sam said with an oddly flat tone in her voice. Freddie shuddered at the mental image that popped unbidden into his head.

Sam paused for a moment and appeared to be mulling something over. She soon apparently reached her decision, as she continued, "Sometimes I wonder if maybe she's not as crazy and stupid as she seems. Like maybe she's got the right idea, and everybody else has got it wrong."

"Got what wrong?" Freddie asked.

"She's always involved with somebody, but she never gets hung up on anybody. She just goes moment to moment to the fullest, and when the moment changes, she just moves on the the next one. No attachments, no regrets. Smart way to do things, maybe," Sam continued thoughtfully.

"Okay, but isn't that, like, cutting yourself off from all the good things that can come from being attached to people?" Freddie said.

"Good like what?" Sam asked incredulously.

"Like friendships, relationships, love," Freddie responded, and he quickly began wondering where the heck this conversation could possibly be going.

Sam chortled. "Yeah, figures you'd take the prissy, delusional view of things."

"How's that delusional?" Freddie wondered in a slightly insulted tone.

"Oh, come on! Look around you, Benson! Relationships! Love!" she snorted sarcastically. "They never last!"

"How so?" he demanded.

"Just look at the people we know!" Sam said. "My mom's on her own. Your mom's on her own. Carly and Spencer's dad's on his own. Gibby's parents are divorced and on their own. Have you ever known Spencer, or any of us, to hold down a stable relationship for any amount of time?"

"Okay," Freddie conceded. "But, maybe, we're all just, like, a strange sampling error or something."

"Okay," Sam conceded. "Let's say you're right. Some people do fall in love and live happily ever after. Still doesn't last. They all live happily ever after right up 'till one of 'em gets mauled by bears or something. Ya always end up with one person alone and destroyed."

"That's pretty morbid, Sam," Freddie said with a touch of worry betrayed by his voice.

"Maybe, but it's still true, and you know it," Sam admonished. "Face it, Fredwina, like it or not, they all end. Maybe you'll break up after a little bit. Or, might not happen 'till you're both ninety and in a nursing home and suddenly one of you gums on a grape the wrong way and chokes to death, but sooner or later it'll happen, and somebody's gonna end up shattered 'cause of it.

"No thanks!" she continued. "There's no way I want that happening to me, and I don't wanna do that to . . . somebody else. Anybody. EVER."

"Well, maybe what matters more than the end is," Freddie mused while searching for a good rebuttal, "everything that happens between the start and the end. Maybe that makes going through the end worthwhile. Maybe you shouldn't waste your present hiding from futures that might or might not happen."

"Yeah, right," Sam fired back sarcastically. "And those were 'art films' Spencer was in right after he dropped outta law school," she said, adding air quotes for emphasis.

"Spencer used to be an actor?" Freddie asked curiously.

Luckily for Sam, Freddie hadn't noticed her brief deer-in-headlights facial expression. "Uhh . . . No, no. It was, just, an inside joke that I – thought you were in on, too. Never mind," she said with an awkward glance in the general direction of the movie collection in her mom's bedroom closet while she wondered whether there was a spot on Freddie's head she could hit with her wrench that would make him forget the last minute or so.

"Well, uh, this stuff isn't gonna assemble itself," she continued smoothly after regaining her composure. "That soldering iron ready to go yet?"

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><p><strong><em>Author's Note: <em>**_This is completely ridiculous head-canon on my part, but it just seems like "Fire" by Arthur Brown would simply have to be Sam Puckett's all-time favorite song._


	4. Brains! Brains!

_**Disclaimer: **I don't own iCarly, and I don't own the characters. I probably wouldn't own anything in the event of a dirty zombie apocalypse, either._

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><p>Freddie glanced back toward the bathroom vanity adjacent to the toilet where the soldering iron was plugged into the wall. The Lysol Sam sprayed earlier was beginning to wear off, and as Freddie surveyed the sign above the toilet which ungrammatically read, "If its yellow, let it mellow. If its brown, flush it down," he thought with a mild gagging reflex, <em>That's about as far from mellow as you can get.<em>

"The tip's glowing now," he told Sam.

"Okay," Sam replied as she emptied the tub of the smashed pipe detritus she recently created. "Let me get it," she continued as she crossed the room toward Freddie, "and you hold this." She handed him a roll of solder with the end pulled outward. "Hold it over there where the pipes join together, and I'll melt it in place. And for chiz's sake, don't make any sudden moves while I'm using this thing!"

"Why the sudden concern?" Freddie asked as he approached the tub.

"'Cause I don't wanna get in trouble for your permanent maiming if you suddenly decide to be a twitchy dumbass while I've got a red hot brander an inch from you," Sam snapped unconvincingly with evasively shifting eyes.

"Okay then," Freddie replied with a roll of his eyes. "Here?" he asked, holding the solder up to the pipe joint and wrapping it around.

"Yeah . . . okay . . ." Sam trailed off. "Steady . . . steady . . . there . . . steady . . ." Freddie couldn't tell whether she was talking to him or to herself as she slowly moved the soldering iron around the pipe and seemed to be almost draping herself over him for extra balance. Freddie also noticed he was suddenly very wet wherever Sam was in contact with him.

"There. That should be all we need of this thing." She exhaled loudly as she pulled away from Freddie, flipped the soldering iron's switch to the "off" position, unplugged it, and placed it gingerly on top of the toilet tank to cool down. Freddie quickly realized why he'd gotten wet, as Sam was suddenly and completely soaked from pouring sweat. He hadn't seen her that nervous since she and Carly were dangling from the side of Bushwell Plaza on a broken window washers' platform.

"You all right, Puckett?" he asked.

"What kinda question's that suppos— oh, uh, yeah. I'm fine," Sam replied as she suddenly realized that she'd just literally and figuratively violated one of her cardinal rules of life: _Never let 'em see you sweat_. "Know what, though?" she continued as she unplugged the soldering iron and wiped her face with a towel.

"What?"

"Now you're all wet, sticky, and covered in grease . . . I win," she chirped merrily.

"Aww, man! And now I reek of your unwashed, uh, self, too!" Freddie blurted while sniffing his shirt as Sam grinned triumphantly. "And I just showered before I went to the studio this morning!"

"Oh, poor baby," Sam taunted, and a malevolent smile crossed her face. She rushed staggeringly toward him, shouting, "UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN! He's backed into a corner! The dirty zombie's gonna devour his pristine nerdy brain! BRAINS! BRAINS! OH NO, prissy boy's in a filthy, sweaty headlock! Time for the fatal noogie!"

Much to Sam's surprise, Freddie managed to push her off and break free. Even more to her surprise, he picked up the filled basin of the Shop-Vac and teetered it precariously over her head. "One more move, Sam," he said as the corner of his mouth turned upward in a happy smirk, "and you get drenched."

"Hell, I'm already soaked and dirty," Sam retorted, and she tickled his side in one swift motion. The water crashed over Sam instantly, but Freddie, who was in the midst of a tickle-induced spasm, also soaked himself in the process.

"That didn't go like I hoped," Freddie said.

"Look at that — I still win!" It was Sam's turn to smirk.

Freddie looked down at his drenched clothing and around at the bathroom. "It looks like we tried to reenact that scene from _Flashdance _in here," he said. "Man, I'm a mess."

"Don't worry; momma'll let you get another shower here once we're done, Princess." Sam laughed as she mockingly squeezed his cheek like an overly-doting grandmother. "Once we get this on, then we can spackle the wall." She picked up the new shower arm diverter and mount, took a step toward the tub, and promptly stumbled and fell right into Freddie. The two tumbled to the floor, pulling each other down as they both reached out for one another in futile attempts to maintain their respective senses of balance.

Sam was sprawled nearly face to face on top of Freddie as the latter let out a muffled, "Ow," from beneath her.

"Well, that was unexpected," Sam uttered while rubbing her newly sore shoulder and remaining atop Freddie, who struggled in vain to get out from under her. "What the hell was that?"

"Mrkgao," a feline voice called from beside them.

Freddie turned his head to the side to find himself staring straight into the yellow-green eyes of Sam's cat, Frothy, who promptly began slurping his eyebrow. The three-legged cat had apparently loped into the room without either of them noticing and tripped up Sam. After a few more licks to Freddie's face, Frothy climbed onto the back of Sam, who was still splayed across Freddie, curled himself into a ball, and began purring loudly.

"Uhh, Frothers? Could ya get off me, please?" Sam asked. Freddie couldn't help but notice that once again she was exhibiting her weird tendency to be more polite and tender with cats than she ever was with people.

"Mrkgao," called the gray and white furball in what seemed to be a negatory response. Frothy remained perched atop Sam, who remained perched atop Freddie. Sam was apparently not about to disturb the cat who had clearly made himself comfortable, even though neither of them were.

Finally, Freddie had an idea. "Hey Frothy," he called in a muffled tone from the bottom of the pile, "there's a bunch of bacon in the hall," and he pointed with his lone free arm.

Frothy leapt to his feet as Sam grunted uncomfortably, and the cat rushed out to the hall.

"How'd you do that?" Sam asked as she wearily pulled herself up to a kneeling position.

Freddie grasped her outstretched hand and pulled up to a seated position. "Well, I figured since it works on you, maybe it'd work with Frothy, too."

"That works on me?" Sam asked incredulously.

"Yeah," Freddie chuckled. "Didn't you ever notice I can get you to do just about anything if I give you meatballs or bacon?"

"Crap," Sam murmured with a distant stare of dawning comprehension as she absent-mindedly wrung out her hair over Freddie's head. "You know my only weakness . . ." She turned her gaze toward Freddie and smiled. "Of course, you know this means I'm gonna have to destroy you now."

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><p><strong><em>Author's Note: <em>**__ I'm sorry for taking almost three weeks to get a new chapter on here, but I've come to the realization that I know nothing whatsoever about plumbing or wall repair, which is making this whole thing go much more slowly than expected since I actually have to do research and junk now.__


	5. A New Ringtone

**_Disclaimer: _**_I don't own iCarly, and I don't own the characters. Those belong to Dan Schneider. I'm also happy to report that I don't own anything vaguely resembling his hairdo, either._

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><p>"What do you mean, your 'only' weakness?" Freddie pressed, perhaps unwisely. "You're a little on the ticklish side, too," he said with a mischievous smirk and raised eyebrows while reaching toward Sam.<p>

"Don't. You. Dare," she glared warily with a strangely admiring glint.

It would have been difficult for an outside observer to tell whether the two were locked into a stare-down or were lost in each others' eyes for the next minute. Sam broke the stalemate by pointing behind Freddie and asking, "Oh, did you see the new Linux system I plopped on my laptop?"

"What? Where?" Freddie asked as he spun about.

"I win! Again!"

"Wait a minute . . ." Freddie said with a half confused, half amused smile, "Did you just say—"

"Here, take this," Sam quickly said while handing him the Shop-Vac hose and plugging in the vacuum. It roared to life, drowning out any further attempts by Freddie to make conversation.

"I'M GONNA GO GET THE STUFF FOR THE WALL!" Sam bellowed over the motor. "CAN YOU SUCK UP THE WATER THAT SPILLED ON THE CORNER OF THE CARPET THERE?"

As Freddie snickered and shook his head, Sam left the room. She returned precariously balancing a sheet of water-resistant drywall across her back as Freddie sucked up the last bit of water and shut off the vacuum.

"What's that?" Freddie asked confusedly.

"Fire class A, water resistant, high impact resistant, mold retardant, 3/8 inch thick, four foot by eight foot Sheetrock. It's the good stuff," Sam replied proudly.

"We didn't get that this morning."

"Nah, got it last night from a construction site down the highway." Sam gingerly propped the sheet against the floor and herself.

"So, you—"

"Far as you know, everything's on the up and up, 'kay?" she replied with a smile. "Hold this thing up for me while I go get the joint compound."

As the drywall slab leaned into him, Freddie immediately noticed how incredibly heavy and unwieldy it was. He found himself wondering how the heck Sam was able to carry it into the bathroom, let alone carry it off from a construction site last night.

Sam came back lugging a large, heavy looking bucket with a box of screws, a power drill, a utility knife, a t-square, and some joint tape perched on top of it. She dropped it to the ground with a thud that shook the floor.

"Ugh, I'm hungry," she said while rubbing her stomach. "Whaddya say we take a break and get some grub?"

"What's here?" Freddie asked.

"Nothin'," Sam answered.

"It's kind of hard to eat air, Sam."

"I got money, remember?" Sam said. "We can go get food somewhere."

"But," Freddie objected, "We're filthy. We're way too disgusting to go out like this."

"Oh, yeah," Sam replied thoughtfully, "I forgot you're a prissy princess — tell ya what: we can get cleaned up now; the wall and the tile don't need to be up for that."

"How's that supposed to work?"

"Simple: we'll screw the shower head onto the pipe, tape a garbage bag over the hole in the wall, and turn the water back on in here. Good enough for right now," Sam answered.

"But wait," Freddie said, "I don't have anything to wear."

"I got clothes," Sam said.

"But wait . . ."

"Dude, you know I got t-shirts and gym shorts and stuff like that. You'll be fine."

Freddie eyed Sam's blank expression warily. "Well . . . okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

While Freddie propped the Sheetrock against the wall and removed the new shower head from its container, Sam left the bathroom and returned with a garbage bag. Reaching into the bag, Sam announced merrily, "And now . . ." She pulled out a roll. "DUCT TAPE!"

_Oh no, not again_, Freddie thought to himself.

"What's that look for?" Sam asked.

"What look?"

"That look," she said. "The Mommy-forgot-to-buy-me-Depends-look."

"I don't have a look! And definitely not _that _look," Freddie shot back defensively.

"Yeah, you kinda do," Sam answered. "What's eatin' ya, kid?"

"Well," Freddie said, "It's just that you sometimes seem to enjoy duct tape a little, uh, much."

"That's cause it's freakin' awesome!" Sam shouted as she jumped excitedly. "You know you can build a working boat outta nothing but duct tape?"

"Hmm, that sounds like something – oh, I don't know – _geeks_ would get psyched up about," Freddie taunted with a smirk.

"So, uh, garbage bag," Sam continued with deliberate calm while glancing away from Freddie's face. "If you just hold it up tight against the hole like this, I'll tape it down. Let the arm poke through the middle, and I'll tape around that, too. Then we can just screw the hose and the shower head onto the end of the arm. Easy enough."

Once they had the bag secured and taped down, Sam said while holding the shower head, "Once we get this thing on, I guess I'll go first and then get some clothes for you. I wanna take this baby for a test drive."

Noticing the visible shudder that ran through Freddie's frame, Sam continued with taunting smile, "Yeah, this might take a while," as she headed to her room to get fresh clothes. "Go entertain Frothy or something while you're waiting," she suggested as she closed the bathroom door and Freddie exited into the hallway.

Freddie headed to the living room, where Frothy promptly found him and began pawing his leg. "What's up, Frothy?" he asked.

"Mrkgao."

"Really?" Freddie sat down on the sofa, and the cat jumped onto his lap.

"Mrkgao," Frothy continued, "Mroww. Heh, heh, heh, hrrp, AAACK." A fresh hairball joined Frothy on Freddie's lap.

"Et tu, Frothe?" Freddie asked dejectedly.

"Mrkgao," the cat replied as he hopped off Freddie's lap and decided a dust bunny in the corner of the room was more interesting.

_At least I'm already disgusting_, Freddie thought as he looked down at the wad of wet cat hair and partially digested food on his lap. He noticed Sam's sticker-covered laptop was sitting on the opposite end of the coffee table, partially hidden by an old pizza box. Curiosity got the better of him, and he picked up the computer and opened it. To his great surprise, it was running the latest version of Ubuntu Linux. After some time poking around all the open source image editing, vector drawing, movie editing, and 3D-animation rendering software she had installed on it with an increasing sense of amazement, he heard the shower shut off.

Shortly after he put the laptop back, Sam emerged, dressed in an old Penny-Tee and shorts while carrying a stack of clothes and a towel for Freddie. "Man, now I _really_ need some red meat," she said ravenously while handing him the clothes. "Hurry it up, kiddo."

As Freddie took the clothes, his eyes immediately fell to the ax-emblazoned T-shirt on the top of the stack. "Umm, Sam?" he asked, holding up the shirt.

"Uh-huh?" she asked innocently.

"Are you, uh, really expecting me to go out in the middle of downtown Seattle –"

"Uh-huh?" she repeated.

"– on a game day –"

"Uh-huh. . ."

"– wearing a 'Timbers Army' shirt?"

"Think of it as a social experiment," she smiled sweetly.

"Experiment in what!" he asked. "How long it takes for me to get pummeled by a drunken mob of wannabe Brits?"

"I've got a Portland scarf you can wear, too, if you want one," Sam replied.

"You're kidding, right?"

"Dude, don't worry. You're going out with _me_. You know I'd never let anybody – well, anybody _else_ at least – lay a finger on you," she said. "Nobody's gonna rearrange your pretty little face." She quickly added, "It'll still look just as bad as it does now when we get back."

"Uh, huh," Freddie said with another smirk, and he marched off to the bathroom.

_Damn that smirk_, she thought to herself.

Sam waited for the sound of the shower to begin running before she picked the lock on the bathroom door, entered, made a beeline for the toilet, and flushed it.

"YEOW!" Freddie shouted from inside the shower.

"Sorry, man! I forgot before that I could flush it now that the water's back on!"

"How'd she get in here?" Freddie muttered to himself as the water returned to a normal temperature.

The toilet flushed again.

"OWWW! Sam, what are you doing?"

"Sorry, sorry! There was a lot in there; I had to plunge it and flush again!" Sam shouted back.

Freddie resumed lathering as the temperature again normalized.

Again, the toilet flushed.

"DUDE!"

Sam answered, "Well, I had to make sure it all went down that time and nothing's clogged anymore!"

After a short while, the toilet flushed once more.

"OUCH! SAM, WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?" Freddie shouted in frustration.

"Had to pee; couldn't be helped!" Sam replied.

Freddie was nearing the end of his shower when the toilet flushed a final time.

"WHAT THE FUCK?" Freddie shouted.

"I squirted some toilet bowl cleaner around, scrubbed it out, and just flushed it down! Ya gonna fault me for being sanitary?" Sam yelled back. "And, hey, guess what?" she added with a giggle, "I've got a new ringtone now!" The sound of Freddie's last outburst played back over the speaker of Sam's cell phone. "I'm gonna go and let you dry off in peace, now," she added before leaving the room.

Shortly after the shower shut off, Freddie's voice called from the bathroom. "Uh, Sam . . . Is there some reason the boxer shorts you picked out for me have the word 'princess' written across the back?"

"Beggars can't be choosy," she shot back. "Besides, it's not like anybody'll see 'em. Just get 'em on and get out here so we can get some food. I'm starving!"


	6. Ooh, Lengua!

**_Omnipresent Disclaimer: _**_I don't own iCarly, and I don't own the characters. I also don't own any tongues of dead cattle._

* * *

><p>"Hey, Portscum!" someone slurred from the sidewalk as Freddie tightened his crossed arms in a futile attempt to block the axe-shaped logo on his t-shirt from public view.<p>

"Ah, ha ha, how original," Freddie muttered darkly as he and Sam scurried by yet another crowd of inebriated Sounders fans frontloading before the game. "Sam," he asked, "why are we going right past Kells Irish Pub?"

"'Cause it's on the way," she responded, as though this fact was completely obvious.

"On the way to what, exactly?"

"Pike Place," she said.

"The market?" Freddie asked as the two continued side by side toward the market.

"No, the roller derby rink. Yes, the market!" Sam snapped. Her expression softened, and she spun around to face Freddie directly in his path. "There's a stand we NEED to eat at. It'll change your life," she said, making an excited grasping motion with her hands in front of her face.

"Life changing, huh?" Freddie said doubtfully.

"Yup," she answered as Freddie resumed walking around her.

"Seriously?" Freddie asked as Sam again fell into step along side him.

"Seriously," Sam purred in a fake accent before suddenly stopping and pointing in the direction of one of the red neon signs over the market's entryways. "Wait, is that Gibby?"

After squinting slightly, Freddie could see Gibby emerging from the direction of Pike Place's fish market stalls and carrying a large salmon. "Hey there, Gib!" he called.

Gibby looked around for the source of the shout in the street without success.

"Gibson!" Sam yelled.

This time Gibby spotted the pair. "MY FISH!" he yelled as they approached.

"Yes. . ." Freddie responded confusedly.

"My fish," Gibby continued, clutching the salmon tight against his plaid button-down short-sleeve shirt-clad person. "Just makin' things clear."

"Crystal," Freddie said, as he and Sam exchanged glances of utter bewilderment.

"So, uhh . . . You guys eatin' salmon today?" Sam asked.

"No," Gibby replied in a tone that made it clear he felt he'd just been asked the stupidest question in the history of humankind.

"O – O . . . kay, then," Sam trailed off.

"Well," Gibby said pleasantly, "I gotta go find Guppy's kite and tie this to it. Have a buzz, guys!"

The two watched Gibby disappear in the direction from which they came. Sam turned to Freddie and wondered, "Who says, 'have a buzz?'"

"I . . . I dunno." Freddie said. "Where to now?"

"Past the fish market," Sam answered. "Bunch more stalls in." Without thinking, Sam grabbed Freddie by the hand to lead him under Pike Place's neon clock and toward the fish market.

The fish market's employees were busy tossing their wares back and forth when the two arrived on the scene. A halibut suddenly went flying in their direction and smacked into the side of Freddie's face opposite Sam.

"Sorry about that, Timber Jim!" one of the fishmongers, who happened to be wearing a neon green Sounders scarf, called out to Freddie in an only slightly apologetic tone. "These fish can get slippery sometimes, you know!" The fish stand's occupants, and Sam, broke out into guffaws.

"It's not funny, Sam," Freddie grumbled.

"Yeah . . ." She paused, thought for a second, and continued giggling, "Yeah, it is."

Freddie gestured down toward the t-shirt he had to borrow from Sam. "How come you don't get harassed wearing this?"

"'Cause I make it look good, Fredifer," was Sam's immediate retort.

Freddie shook his head. "Is it just me," he asked, "or does this day just keep getting lamer and more convoluted?"

"Yep. Happy Bloomsday, Fredward," Sam answered, as Freddie abruptly turned to look at her with a mixture of confusion, surprise, and wonder.

"What?" Sam asked with a defensive half-laugh.

"You don't read," Freddie insisted.

"I'l read anything as long as it's been banned a buncha times and had an obscenity trial," was Sam's reply.

"Ever worry if our sense of humor's gotten too obscure and ironically self-aware for our target audience?" Freddie wondered aloud.

"Nah," Sam answered. "That's what Wikipedia's for. People can look stuff up; lemme show ya."

Sam whipped out her Pear Phone and began typing. "Ah. Here we go: 'Sam Puckett sprang fully formed from the head of Zeus wielding a samurai sword early in the mythological mists of antiquity. She is currently the brilliant and stunning co-host of the popular web series _iCarly _and the reigning Miss Teen Jakarta. She is an eternal font of awesomeness who led the Bulgarian Air Force to victory over the forces of the world's fattest priest in the Battle of Trafalgar Square in 1742, and ten years later she founded Harvard University and composed _Bohemian Rhapsody_. In the 1850s, she invented baseball and put the lime in the coconut.'"

"Wikipedia says that?" Freddie asked disbelievingly.

"For now," Sam answered with a sly smile. "Would the internet ever steer you wrong?"

Freddie shook his head and smiled.

They resumed their stroll. "Ya ever eat down here before?" Sam asked.

"Not much. I hardly ever get here 'cause my mom thinks food stands like these are 'unsanitary and only patronized by low-lifes and hippies,'" Freddie said with an expression that clearly indicated he believed that his mom was being ridiculous. "I like 'em, though," he continued.

"Let's find out how low you can go. We're almost there," Sam said.

Ahead loomed a makeshift stand with a small handwritten sign that read, "Taqueria." Large pots with steamers perched over them covered the grill behind the table that served as a counter.

"During the week they do tacos," Sam explained. "On weekends they make tamales instead. They got this one kind that's just freakin' awesome. Go find us a table over there. I don't wanna spoil the surprise by you hearing what I'm ordering."

Freddie located an open small table with a couple of plastic chairs and sat down. Sam arrived shortly thereafter carrying a plate of freshly steamed tamales. Sam already had one unwrapped and partially stuffed in her mouth on the way over, and she was working on a second one as she sat down.

"Ya gotta try these," she attempted to mumble.

"Okay," Freddie said as he began unwrapping one and Sam eyed him carefully with a look of wildly excited anticipation.

"Oh. My. God," Freddie said as he took his first bite and his eyes nearly exploded out of their sockets in amazement. "This is incredible," he said between chews.

Sam smiled widely. "Wha'd I tell ya?"

"Yeah. Wow," Freddie gushed. "What's the filling in these? There's all the onions and herbs and stuff, but then there's this meat that's like – tastes like superbeef or something. What is it?"

"You really wanna know?" Sam asked warily.

"Lay it on me," Freddie said.

"Okay: beef tongue!" Sam answered with a grin.

"Ooh, _lengua!_" Freddie smiled.

"You still like it?" Sam asked with an amazed look on her face.

"Yeah," Freddie replied, "I love food made from bits like this. My mom never has anything like it around, but that doesn't stop me from getting ahold of stuff like this sometimes." He studied Sam's face. "You surprised?"

"Yeah. A little," Sam answered as her eyes sparkled. "I never knew you could be so . . . adventurous."

"Well, that's me," Freddie joked.

Sam and Freddie tore through the rest of the tamales in no time. "Those were awesome," Freddie gushed. "Don't get many, though."

"Nah," was Sam's reply. She studied his face carefully as though she was considering something.

"What?" Freddie asked.

"I'm gonna take you down the rabbit hole," Sam said after another moment's reflection. "Be right back," and with that, she got up and headed to a distant stand that was decorated with several geometrically-patterned quilts. She returned with some forks, knives, and something that vaguely resembled a loaf in some kind of casing.

"So what's this supposed to be?" Freddie asked.

"It's from the Pennsylvania Dutch stand," Sam said. "It's – ready for this?"

Freddie nodded.

"Pork sausage and some kind of potato filling, mixed together and stuffed into a pig's stomach, and then baked for hours," Sam continued excitedly.

"Sounds interesting," Freddie said.

"Tastes even better," Sam said while handing him a knife and a fork. "Well, dig in."

"Wow," Freddie said. "This is really good."

"Yeah," Sam uttered in mid-bite, "It's like crispy and soft meat of the überpig mixed together."

"You know what's a little weird about this?" Freddie asked.

"What?"

"That it has sausage – you know, pig meat – stuffed inside a pig's stomach. As if the pig cannibalized itself or something," Freddie continued as they ate. "Who first thought to do something like that?"

"Somebody with a totally awesome sense of humor," Sam answered. "Besides, what's it say about you that you thought of it, too?"

"I don't know," Freddie responded as he chewed. "So what do we have to do once we get back?"

"Still gotta do a lot," Sam sighed. "We'll cut out a chunk of drywall to fill the hole – it doesn't gotta be exact. That's what the joint compound's for.

"Once we got that nailed in and all smoothed out," she continued, "we'll have to wait a few hours, probably 'till tonight, for it to dry before we can slap the tiles on."

"Aren't you hanging out with Carly tonight?"

"Nah. Tonight's the season premiere of _Cryptozoology Digest_ on the Pseudoscience Channel, and she wants to watch it without anybody interrupting," Sam said with an annoyed roll of her eyes.

"That's on Saturday nights?" Freddie wondered.

"Yeah, right between _This Week In Homeopathy_ and _The Men Who Yell At Ghosts_," Sam said.

"I always thought it was on Sunday nights. You know, between _MythSpreaders_ and_ Ley Line Love_."

"Used to be, but the network cancelled _Ancient Aliens _'cause they thought it was too ridiculous and moved _Cryptozoology Digest_ over to its old spot."

"Oh," Freddie said. "I can't figure out why she's so hung up on that show."

"Don't know," Sam answered. "I love Carly to bits, but that chick confuses me sometimes."

Freddie looked up from his end of the rapidly disappearing pig stomach. "Speak of the devil," he said as he saw Carly and Spencer, who was carrying a small bag, approach.

Sam spun around in her chair, "'Sup, kids?"

"How was the exhibit?" Freddie asked.

"It was fun," Carly said as she and her brother approached. "It's amazing how many kinds of liquid soap there are in oh my God Freddie whyareyouWEARINGSAM'SCLOTHING?"

Freddie whispered loudly to Sam, "You said it was all gender neutral and nobody would notice!"

"That's right," Sam replied calmly. "I said **nobody** would notice. Carly's not nobody."

"Sooo . . . cross-dressing . . . randomly eating – what in the world **is** that? – in the middle of the market . . . What's going on, you two?" Carly asked curiously.

"We're in the middle of a home improvement project at my place," Sam began.

"That got really messy, and I didn't have a change of clothes with me," Freddie finished.

"We got hungry," Sam continued.

"So here we are," Freddie said.

"This is pig stomach," Sam said as she gestured proudly to the tray.

"Eww . . . Eww, eww, eww," Carly gasped as she jumped back from the table.

"It's actually really good," Freddie interjected.

"I'll take your word for it," Carly said warily.

"Wha'd you guys get?" Sam asked, pointing to Spencer's bag.

"I got a bar of soap," Spencer answered while pulling it from the bag.

"At the liquid soap show?" Freddie asked in confusion.

"Yeah," Spencer answered as he sniffed it dreamily. "It smells like lemons."

"Okay . . ." Sam began as Spencer continued sniffing the bar in reverie.

"And I got some lunch," Carly said as she pulled out a sandwich.

"That's just a plain old, boring cheese sandwich, Carls," Sam said.

"No, it's not," Carly objected. "It's gorgonzola. It's classy."

"Gorgonzola," Freddie smiled. "Does it come with snakes and shout, 'J'Accuse?'"

Everyone stared blankly at Freddie.

"Oh, come on!" he said defensively. "That was funny!"

"Remember earlier when you were wondering if we were getting too obscure, Fredward?" Sam asked. "Well, congratulations," she continued sarcastically, "ya just did it!"

"Well, obviously you must have gotten it, Sam," Freddie retorted.

"Anyway," Sam said as she spun in her seat to face Carly and Spencer once again, "what are you up to for the rest of the day?"

"I've got some homework to do before _Cryptozoology Digest_ premiere comes on," Carly said. "It's supposed to be about how the chupacabra's in danger of going extinct due to habitat destruction in Puerto Rico. Those poor, poor chupacabras," she continued sadly. "What are you up to later?"

"Replacing a chunk of drywall," Freddie answered.

"Then we gotta do some tiling tonight," Sam continued. "Least we got all the plumbing work done now."

"What happened?" Spencer asked.

"Sam's mom broke the shower and –" Freddie began.

Carly promptly cut him off. "We don't need to know any more details!" she said with a shudder.

"Well, should we mosey?" Spencer asked his sister.

"Yeah, we probably should," Carly replied. "I've got a lot to do before tonight. See you guys tomorrow for rehearsal?"

"See you then," Freddie waved happily. Carly waved back to the pair, and began walking off.

Spencer turned to follow his sister when Freddie asked, "Oh, Spence – Been meaning to ask you: were you in some movies at some point?"

The wide-eyed, deer-in-headlights look returned to Sam's face while all the color drained from Spencer's. "Could we please not talk about this right now?" he whispered nervously while glancing in the direction of Carly, who luckily hadn't heard anything.

"Hey, Freddie," Sam said as she quickly regained her composure and gestured toward the tray. "Whadya say we finish this up and get back to my place?"

"Okay," Freddie said, as Spencer walked off looking immensely relieved.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Note: <em>**_This chapter began life as a really convoluted excuse to use the word "fishmonger." Some of the places mentioned here, like Kells Irish Pub and the Pike Place Market, are real places in Seattle that are located closely together. There really is a fish market in Pike Place where the people who work there throw the fish around. Plus, Kells is an officially recognized partner pub by Major League Soccer and the Seattle Sounders, and it was featured on an episode of the Travel Channel's show "Ghost Adventures," which is the show I sort of had in mind when I came up with "The Men Who Yell At Ghosts" on the Pseudoscience Channel. That and it's an Irish themed bar, and James Joyce, who wrote _Ulysses_, which is the book that keeps getting sneakily alluded to here, was Irish. So everything sort of ties together . . . Sort of.  
><em>

_I'm actually a vegetarian, but I have to say that if I ever went back to eating meat, my first meal would absolutely have to be pig stomach._


	7. The Point of The Point

**_Disclaimer:_** _I don't own iCarly, and I don't own the characters. I do own a copy of Nilsson's _The Point_, but I don't own the rights to that, either. I fervently wish it was possible to own such a thing as a Gary Coleman grill, but, alas, some things just aren't meant to be._

* * *

><p>The pair rose from white plastic chairs after finishing their porcine innard feast and began navigating their way back to the front of Pike Place Market when Freddie's phone buzzed.<p>

"What's up?" Sam asked as he pulled his phone from his pocket and stared at it.

"Text – wait," Freddie answered haltingly. "Couple of texts – from . . . my mom."

Sam groaned loudly. "What's that wreck worried about now?"

Freddie glared at Sam for a moment before looking back at his phone and replying. "First one says she's pulling a double shift at work and won't be home 'till the middle of the night. Second one . . . Oh, hey," he grimaced. "It's about you."

"About me?" Sam asked with a nervous laugh as she abruptly stopped in her tracks. "Whadaya mean?"

Freddie stopped walking and turned to face Sam. "Well, about my cousin Stephanie," he said darkly while Sam's face brightened. "Seems my aunt's confused why, ever since I baby-sat her last week, she won't stop talking about somebody called 'Funny Aunt Sam,' won't stop calling herself 'Grasshopper,' and keeps randomly shouting 'KABOOM!'" He grimaced at Sam as she beamed from ear to ear. "Oh, and she keeps throwing stuff at people, laughing, and saying, 'I win!'"

"What?" Sam asked innocently as her nervous laugh remained intact.

"I knew I never should have let you near her," Freddie continued as Sam took a swig from her water bottle.

"How do you figure? I get along great with that squirt!" Sam objected.

"Sam, you can't teach a three year-old to launch bottle rockets!" Freddie said angrily.

"Uh, yeah. You can," Sam insisted as she screwed the cap back onto her bottle of water.

"No, you really can't," Freddie replied darkly.

"Yes. You can," Sam continued argumentatively. "I taught Stephanie to do it. She's three. So, yes, you **can** teach a three year-old to launch bottle rockets."

Freddie groaned in exasperation. "That's not what I meant, Sam."

"Ahh-ah! But that's what you said," Sam insisted. "Am I wrong?"

"No, but –"

"Am I wrong?" she pressed.

"No, Sam," Freddie gave in. "You're not **wrong**. You're just. . . just. . . UGHHHH!" Freddie threw his hands in the air and grabbed the top of his head in frustration.

"Dude, I was introducing her to SCIENCE. In a fun way," Sam said as she looked him directly in the eyes. "I thought you, of all people, would appreciate that," she continued in a voice that sounded strangely like it might convey a tiny bit of hurt. "Besides, it's not like I had the kid playing with explosives or lighting fires or something. We were just usin' old soda bottles, water, and a bike pump."

"Well, I didn't think of it like that," Freddie said in an apologetic tone.

"See?" Sam said triumphantly. "I'm a GOOD influence on that pipsqueak. You said yourself, she can't stop talking about me. If all she ever got to hang out with was your family, where'll she ever get her recommended daily allowance of awesome from? From now on, whenever you babysit her, you **need** to make sure I'm around to steer that kid right." Freddie stared at her blankly as she poked him in the chest. "Next time we'll make some volcanoes outta Mentos and Coke," she continued with an affirmative nod.

Despite trying as hard as he could to avoid doing so, Freddie couldn't help but smile as they resumed their walk.

"See? You think it'd be a good idea, too!" Sam announced cheerfully as she noticed the look on Freddie's face.

"I guess as long as we kept it educational . . ." Freddie wondered aloud.

"We'll give that kid an education, all right," Sam asserted.

As they passed by some grocers' stalls, Freddie grabbed Sam's arm and pointed toward them. "Hey, don't you think maybe we should get some food while we're here? You know, so you'll actually have stuff to eat in your house?"

"Depends," Sam answered. "I don't wanna get anything that has to be refrigerated ever since that one time my mom forgot to pay the electric bill."

"That was three years ago, Sam."

"Yeah. Still doesn't mean I still don't gotta yank my shirt over my nose every time I open the freezer. Stench never totally leaves," she said warily.

"Okay," Freddie suggested, "we could still get some potatoes and onions and stuff like that – that'll keep for a while."

"Well," Sam said as she rubbed her chin, lost in thought, "if it means we can keep aimlessly avoiding doing anything for a while longer, let's do it."

"Let's not lose sight of our objective, though," Freddie warned.

Sam raised one eyebrow. "Objective?" she asked incredulously.

"Yeah, you know – hanging the drywall and all that. You said we've gotta wait a few hours for that to dry before we can get the tiles on tonight," Freddie explained. "We have to make sure we have enough time for all that."

"I know that!" Sam snapped. "I just can't believe even you'd say something as dorky as 'objective.'"

Freddie gave Sam a dubious look before turning his attention to an assortment of dried beans and pulses. "What I meant is we have stuff to do and can't let the day get away from us," he said while surveying the food. "It's like we're in a story where the author's totally lost sight of the plot or something"

"Plot?" Sam said disbelievingly as she ambled up beside him. "It's just a day. There's no plot; it's just a bunch of stuff that pops up. Not everything has to have a point."

"What are you talking about?" Freddie asked as he idly fingered the end of a shallot. "Everything has a point somehow."

"Freddie, not even _The Point_ had a point," Sam argued as she held up an onion.

"And that was the point of _The Point_," Freddie shot back.

"No, everything in it was totally pointless."

"No, Sam. The whole point of _The Point_ was that you don't have to have a point to have a point," Freddie lectured. "So it logically follows that all the pointless things in _The Point_ served to illustrate that point, and that –" he abruptly stopped as he noticed Sam was clenching and unclenching her fists and beginning to shake all over. "What's wrong?"

"It's taking everything I have," Sam gritted through clenched teeth, "for me to not ki—punch you right in the kisser right now."

"Ki–punch in the kisser?" Freddie asked confusedly.

"You know what I mean," Sam glared.

"Okay . . ." Freddie cocked his head and replied with a smirk as Sam's face clenched up even more. He turned his attention back to the food stalls. "So what should we get?"

"Beans, rice, potatoes, onions, dried chiles, garlic, maybe some dried spices . . ." Sam said as she surveyed the options. "I can definitely throw something together in the crockpot outta that."

"Don't you have that at school right now?" Freddie wondered as he picked up a sack of potatoes.

"Nah, I got the Gary Coleman grill in my locker. Crockpot's at home," Sam answered. "These are some good lookin' onions right here."

"How many should we get?" Freddie asked as he handed the potato sack to the stall's owner for weighing.

Placing the potatoes on the scale, the gray-haired lady behind the stall asked, "How long have you two been together? You're such an adorable young couple."

Freddie and Sam's faces fell simultaneously.


	8. Just Screw It Already!

**_Disclaimer: _**_I don't own iCarly, and I don't own the characters._

* * *

><p>Sam and Freddie trudged back to the Puckett residence in awkward mutual silence. Freddie lugged a sack of potatoes in one hand and a bag of garlic and spices in the other, while Sam slung bags of onions and beans over her right shoulder. Occasionally on their journey she would surreptitiously glance over at Freddie briefly, as though she were about to say something, before abruptly shifting her eyes forward again.<p>

When they reached the walkway leading to the house, which was surprisingly well manicured as a result of Pam's recent tryst with a landscape architect, Sam reached for Freddie's bags and said woodenly, "I can take care of everything from here."

"Look," Freddie objected while refusing to hand over the bags, "that drywall's insanely bulky. It's going to be really tough for one person to hang, and –"

"No, really, it'll be fine," Sam interrupted him while trying to grab Freddie's bags again.

"Sam," Freddie began again while swinging the bags out of her reach, "if this is about that lady at –"

"No! She was stupid," Sam interrupted again. "Totally bonkers! Round the bend; probably senile. Belongs in a loony bin somewhere."

"Sam . . ."

"Go upgrade your computers and have a nerdgasm or whatever creepy chiz it is you dorks do when you're alone," Sam continued curtly as she finally succeeded in wrestling the bags from Freddie's grasp. "Which I guess is all the time."

"Sam . . ." Freddie continued heatedly.

"Get outta here before I mash your head!" Sam threatened while waving the sack of potatoes at him with her left hand as a wince crossed her face. "I'm fine from here on out! GO!"

Freddie shook his head and threw his hands in the air in disgust. "Fine! Suit yourself," he said darkly as he spun about and stormed off toward the bus stop down the street. Sam headed toward her front door, and her wince grew more pronounced the further she carried the bags in her left hand.

Freddie stood stewing at the green recycled plastic bench on the corner for several minutes, just long enough for him to begin wondering what was taking the bus so long and what would possibly possess the city of Seattle to name a public transport route the "Conveniently Ill-Timed Line" when his Pear Phone rang. He glared angrily at the name on the screen.

"WHAT?" he shouted into the phone.

"Freddie – I, uh, maybe . . . kind of need a little help," Sam's voice sheepishly crackled into his ear.

"Well, sounds like you're up a creek without a paddle, Puckett," Freddie responded curtly.

"Uh, thing is," Sam continued with an oddly begging tone in her voice, "when we fell in the bathroom earlier, I landed on my shoulder kinda funny . . . It's – it's really tightened up or something."

"So?" Freddie demanded.

"I can't lift my left shoulder much without it hurting too much to move any more," Sam answered. "I really, really need your help."

"Well, uh, that's, umm, too bad, Sam . . . 'Cause . . . 'Cause I'm already on the bus and on my way home. You should have thought of that earlier before you threatened to mash my head," Freddie lied as he began kicking the bus stop sign pole to make clanging noises.

"Freddie, it doesn't sound like you're on the bus right now," Sam responded. "It sounds like somebody's kicking a metal pole trying to make it sound like you're on the bus."

"No it's not! I'm on the bus!" Freddie said with a hint of desperation.

"I'm looking out the bathroom window right now, and I can see the bus stop. Somebody's there kickin' a pole. I'm guessing that's you," Sam said.

"Butter!" Freddie grumbled.

"What?" Sam asked.

"Why the heck should I help you now?" Freddie wondered.

Sam paused. "You shouldn't, Freddie," she said quietly. "I was a total jackass back there, and . . . I'm sorry, okay? You've got no reason to help me . . . other than you just being that rare kind of person who does that sorta thing anyway."

Freddie inhaled deeply. "Is the front door unlocked?"

"Yeah."

"I'll be in in a couple of minutes," Freddie answered.

As he began walking back toward Sam's house, the bus finally pulled up. Freddie shook his head and kept going.

"Anybody home?" Freddie shouted in the front doorway of Sam's house.

"Back here!" Sam shouted.

Freddie stopped abruptly in the living room when he saw Sam standing in the hallway, shirtless, with a plastic bag of ice Saran-wrapped around her left shoulder.

"What?" she asked with an incredulous chuckle as Freddie averted his eyes.

"Don't you wanna put a shirt on?" he asked.

"Oh, come on," she said, pointing to her reddish-brown stained undergarment. "It's my barbecue-eatin' bra. Nothing ya haven't seen before!"

"Yeah, and it was weird then, too," Freddie replied with a hard swallow.

"Weird? Might I remind you who's wearing whose underwear right now? Besides," she continued, pointing to her shoulder, "it feels a little better with the ice, and a shirt would just get in the way. You comin' over here, or what?"

Freddie swallowed again. "What do we have to do?"

Sam spun around and headed down the hallway. "Follow me, Princess," she beckoned with a smirk.

Entering the bathroom, Sam asked, "Could you pull off the garbage bag at the top and unscrew the shower head and arm for me, too? I got the bottom and sides of the bag untaped, but I can't reach high enough with both arms to get the rest."

"Wow," Freddie wondered as he began pulling at the duct tape around the top of the garbage bad. "How'd it get that bad that quickly?"

"I don't know," Sam said, rubbing her shoulder. "I didn't have to lift anything or move it much the whole time we were out. Sure felt it once I had to move it back here, though."

Freddie pulled the bag from the wall, wadded it up, and turned to face Sam. He grinned wickedly.

"What?" she asked warily.

Freddie chuckled. "You got decked by your cat! Your three-legged cat!" he taunted as he began removing the shower head.

"Watch it, Fredweird," Sam said as she hovered behind him threateningly. "We might all be gimpy around here, but we can sure do some damage. I can still take you with just one arm."

"And I can take myself – and 'Squishy' – right out the front door if you try to, remember?" Freddie countered as he waved the detached shower head in her face for emphasis.

"Oh, all right," Sam grumbled. "You win . . . This time," she added under her breath.

Freddie looked quite pleased with himself. "Now what?" he asked.

"Full body massage?" Sam suggested hopefully.

Freddie glared at her in baleful disbelief.

"Well, that's what I really want right now," Sam defended herself while adjusting the ice pack on her shoulder. "Guess we should get that drywall up and filled in first, though."

"Tell you what," Freddie said, indicating the drywall and joint compound, "Let's get this in so it can start drying, and if you still really want a shoulder rub or something then . . . I'll think about it, okay?"

"Deal," Sam said. "I got the drywall measured out and scored while you were out, so we've just gotta break off the edges and it should be good to go. Count of three?"

Freddie grabbed one side of the Sheetrock slab on the floor while Sam grasped the other side. "One," he began.

"Two," Sam continued.

"Three!" they shouted in unison as they broke the excess drywall cleanly off the sides of the slab.

The repeated the process for the extra drywall at the top and bottom, and Sam punched out the hole for the shower arm in the middle.

"Okay, here's the tough part – we've gotta get this lifted and held up against the wall," Sam said. "There's no way I can lift it up or hold it there on my own right now."

"I should be able to hold it up there," Freddie said, looking at the hole in the wall.

"Good," Sam said. "I can help you lift it on the one side, and then if you can hold it up I'll get the screwdriver. Count of three again?"

"One," Freddie began.

"Two," Sam continued.

"Three!" They lifted the piece into place, and Freddie held it steady while Sam grabbed the power drill with a screwdriver bit and a drywall screw. Turning back toward the shower, she stood transfixed for a moment as she wondered why she'd never noticed Freddie's arms before. Snapping out of her trance, Sam made her way back to the shower. Gingerly holding the screw in her left hand, she screwed it into the stud behind the drywall using her right hand. She repeated with another screw at the bottom of another stud.

"Okay, Freddie," Sam said. "Now I can hold it up at the top one-handed. Can you take this," she continued, waving the drill in his face, "and put more screws in the middle and at the top?"

"Shouldn't be too hard," Freddie answered, taking the drill and some screws. "Ever wonder why these things are called 'bits?'" he wondered as he looked at the tip.

"No." Sam replied, sounding bored.

"And who was Chuck, and why is his key so important?"

"Just screw it already!" Sam groaned. "My hand's gettin' tired!"

_Just don't say anything_, Freddie thought to himself as he gulped and set to work.

After the final screw was bored into the wall, Sam and Freddie stepped back. The piece of drywall Sam had cut out fit almost perfectly into the hole. "Wow. Startin' to look like a decent bathroom again," Sam said with surprise.

Freddie looked around at the rubber ducks, glass swans, shag carpet, and pastel colors. _Just don't say anything_, he thought again while blinking.

"Guess I'll just have you reattach the arm and the shower head while I get started filling in the bottom of this with the joint compound," Sam said. "Then you can finish the top. After that, we just let this dry 'till tonight, then we'll slap the tiles back on. Done," she punctuated, wiping her hands together.

"Okay." Freddie dragged the bucket of joint compound across the room and handed Sam a putty knife. "Knock yourself out," he said as he picked up the shower arm and climbed back into the tub. As he struggled to get the arm reattached to the pipe, Sam tried to squeeze between him and the bottom edge of the drywall with a knife full of joint compound.

"Oof – Sam!" He shouted as she inadvertantly head-butted his midsection, "You're not making this any easier."

"You're not making this any easier, either, Fredwad!" Sam shot back as a flying glob of jostled joint compound found a new home in her hair. Freddie finally secured the arm, but only did so with a motion that resulted in Sam's elbow getting smeared with the joint compound she just applied to the wall.

Sam shot up to a standing position and almost sent Freddie sprawling backwards over the edge of the tub. "That's it Fredward, IT'S ON!" she shouted as he managed to regain his balance, and she flung the remaining joint compound on her knife in his direction.

Freddie wiped the white goop that landed on his left cheek and picked up another putty knife dipped in more joint compound in one swift motion, and he flung it the compound at Sam with a backhanded tennis motion. "DIRECT HIT!" he shouted triumphantly with arms raised as it landed on her collarbone.

His celebration was short lived, as Sam quickly returned fire and hit Freddie on the forehead. "30-15!" she shouted gleefully. "I'm still winning!" she added in a sing-song voice. "Plus, that oughta be worth more since I got you right on the forehead. 40-15!"

Another glob nested itself in Sam's hair. "30-all," Freddie pointed out.

"40-30," Sam objected.

"No, 30-30," Freddie argued.

"40-30!" Sam insisted.

"Fine," Freddie said, and he flung a glob that landed directly in Sam's belly button. "Placement like that should be enough points to override deuce and take the game. I win, Puckett!"

"You mean you win one game outta the first set," Sam countered just before she flung more joint compound at him.


	9. That's Some Creepy Chiz Right There

**_Disclaimer__: _**_I don't own iCarly, and I don't own the characters. I also want to emphasize that **the items and game described later in this chapter are purely hypothetical and are done so only for the purpose of fictional comedy. They should not be imitated in any way**. Seriously, anyone who would actually try to play dart golf is an effing moron, plain and simple, and such a person would be wholly deserving of the Darwin Award potentially coming their way. Lawn darts were banned for damn good reasons._

_Anyway, here endeth the stern safety rant. On with the comedy..._

* * *

><p>The Pucketts' living room couch was covered in black garbage bags, and upon it sprawled Sam and Freddie, side by side, their clothing and bodies encrusted head-to-toe in white splotches of dried joint compound.<p>

"How did you suddenly get so good at glop tennis?" Sam asked as she turned her head to face Freddie.

"Been practicing a little," Freddie said as he faced her with a wry smirk.

"I can't believe it went all the way to five sets and a tiebreaker," Sam said, wide-eyed.

"Get used to it. I'm catching up," Freddie gloated while mussing Sam's crusty hair.

"I still beat you, though," Sam added with a playful shove on his arm.

"Barely." Freddie paused. "At least the wall's patched up now, and this gunk sponged off everything else in the room easily."

"Doesn't seem to wipe off us easy, though. Too bad we can't take showers again 'till the wall dries and we can get the tiles back on," Sam said.

"Yeah. Looks like we're stuck being filthy until tonight." A discomfiting thought suddenly crossed Freddie's mind. "Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"You sure this stuff isn't, like, toxic if it's left on the skin for a while like this?" he asked.

"Pshhh – Beats the hell outta me," Sam responded nonchalantly.

"That's reassuring," Freddie said grimly. "So now that we're stuck here, what do we do?"

"I could still use a good shoulder rub," Sam suggested hopefully while pointing to her left side.

"Well . . ." Freddie hesitated.

"Please?" she said smilingly while batting her eyelids and thinking, _let's see if this works again_.

"Well, alright. But just this once," he insisted sternly.

Sam repositioned herself on the sofa. "Start rubbin', boy," she commanded.

"You could be a little more polite than that, you know," Freddie countered.

"Dearest Fredward," Sam began in a mock posh accent, "prithee wouldst thou please apply thine delicate wussy fingers to mine neck and shoulders?"

"I'm just not gonna catch a break here, am I?" he asked with a grin.

"Nope. Now get crackin'," she insisted.

Freddie put his hands on Sam's shoulders. "Where's it hurt?" he asked.

"Right where your left thumb is," Sam answered. She made a small circular motion with her left shoulder socket. "That's about as far as I can move it and be comfortable."

Freddie began kneading at and around the spot Sam indicated. "Oh-ho-ho-ho-yeah!" Sam uttered with delight.

"Now try moving it again," Freddie said as he stopped massaging her shoulder.

Sam repeated her arm motion in a slightly wider arc. "Wow, it's feeling a bit better already," she said, impressed.

"That's good," Freddie said. "It means you didn't tear anything; it's probably just a bad sprain. Let me see if I can't loosen things up some more," he continued as he began rubbing her shoulder again.

"Oooh – Hey, how did you get so good at this?" Sam asked.

"My mom used to make me help out with that charity, 'Massage The Elderly.' You know, the one that's supposed to help old people become less irritating," he answered.

"That's some creepy chiz right there," she said with a thousand yard stare.

"Yeah. Yeah; it really is," Freddie said as he grimaced and shuddered as memories of his forced volunteerism came flooding back. He began kneading Sam's left shoulder harder before moving on to both her shoulders and her neck.

It wasn't long before Sam had closed both of her eyes and was biting her bottom lip. "Ohhh . . .right there . . . oh yeaaaah . . . that's the stu-u-u-uff . . . ye-he-he-hesss . . . Ooohooohooohooohoooooooo . . . I LIKE you," she purred.

Sam's eyes shot open widely the instant she realized what she'd just said. "I mean – I like having you around as my personal massage peon! Hate your guts, of course. Goes without sayin'," she continued. "Well – keep rubbin'," she said with a quick glance back at Freddie.

After a few more minutes of massaging, Freddie stopped and asked Sam, "How's it now?"

She circled her left arm even further than before. "A LOT better. Thanks, Fredison!"

Freddie sat back on the sofa with his hands interlocked behind his head and a wide smile on his face. "So now what do we do?" he asked.

"Don't know," Sam replied. "Movie?"

"Sounds good to me," Freddie said as he got up off the sofa and walked into the hallway. "They're all in your mom's closet, right?" he shouted back to her.

Sam suddenly remembered the recent additions Pam made to her movie collection, bolted from the sofa, and ran after Freddie. "Uh, no, no!" she shouted desperately. "Not anymore! We moved them to –"

It was too late. Freddie was already in the closet rifling through the DVD stack. "Uh, Sam?" he asked with innocent curiosity. "What are _European Fun Guys 8_ and _European Fun Guys 12 _supposed to be?"

"Oh, uh, that's, just . . . nothing. Um, you know that guy at the convenience store who makes the stupid pirate movies? Yeah, they're . . . uh . . . his crap. My mom got 'em thinking . . . thinking . . . they'd be good for some bizarre reason . . . Total schlock . . . Not worth watchin' . . . You'd be bored to death two minutes in . . . so don't even bother!" Sam stammered.

"Oh. Okay then," Freddie said, putting the discs back in the stack.

Sam exhaled deeply and unevenly. "Hey," she said to him, recovering quickly, "how about I show you my BRILLIANT new money making idea instead! Come on!" And with that, she ran over to her bedroom.

"Oh, boy," Freddie said warily as he followed. "At least it can't be worse than the Penny-Tee fiasco."

"No, this is guaranteed to succeed where that failed!" she gloated, and she handed him a small, but heavy, metal spike and an array of plastic fins.

Freddie examined the items in each hand. "Wait," he said as he fitted them together. "These things screw together and make . . . SAM! This is a lawn dart!"

"Yup," she said proudly.

"They're totally illegal!" he objected.

"Yeah, for almost 25 years now, except for those chizzy all-plastic ones you can still get in Vancouver that nobody wants," she agreed.

"You can't make or sell lawn darts! This is WORSE than the Penny-Tee fiasco!" Freddie said.

"No, wait," Sam replied, "here's the brilliant part: you can't make lawn darts, but you can," she continued as she snatched the dart from Freddie's hands and unscrewed it, "make and sell 'Sammie's Shiny Spikes' and 'Puckett's Fun Fins!' If somebody chooses to buy both items and chooses to put them together even though they're sold separately . . . Well, there's nothing I can do about the personal choices other people make."

Freddie gaped dumbfoundedly at Sam.

"Well, whadaya think?" she asked, grinning.

"I think," Freddie said measuredly, "you have the ethical sense of a great business leader."

"Thanks!" Sam said with a smile as her eyes lit up.

"I didn't mean that as a compliment!" Freddie objected.

"Whatever," Sam continued as her eyes darkened again. "Look, when somebody tries to sell a set of old lawn darts, they can go for a hundred bucks or more, 'cause back when they were banned some consumer safety dweebs said all the existing ones should be destroyed for some dumb reason. There aren't many left. I could make a killing off of this!"

"I'm sure some killing would be involved," Freddie said darkly.

"Sooo . . . I've made a prototype set here. Wanna help me test 'em out?" she asked hopefully.

"Sam, I'm not playing lawn darts with you!"

"Don't have to – here's the other brilliant part: The old lawn dart game was boring. Basically just horseshoes. Yugh," she said disgustedly. "Know what else is boring? Golf. Know what's more boring? Disc golf. Know what'd be totally awesome instead? Lawn dart golf!"

"Lawn dart golf," Freddie repeated in disbelief.

"Yeah! The one I handed you is for mid-range shots. I've got a driver," she said as she held up a gargantuan dart, "and a putter," she continued while hoisting a small dart, "over here, too. How much cooler would golf be if it had the constant potential for sudden death and catastrophic maiming for everybody within a hundred yards?"

"Sam," Freddie said sternly, "this isn't just beyond the pale; this is beyond what I thought was YOUR pale, too."

Sam looked deflated. "Really?"

"Really," Freddie replied as he looked her straight in the eyes.

"That's weird," she said, looking off to Freddie's side. "Carly, Spencer, Gibby, Tasha, and Wendy all said exactly the same thing when I ran this past each of them."

"Well," Freddie said, "there's a reason for that. Most people don't find delight in the maiming and deaths of others."

"Really?" Sam asked in innocent disbelief.

"Really," Freddie repeated as though he was speaking to a first grader.

"Huh," she paused, lost in thought. "Then explain NASCAR."

"I don't think anybody can explain NASCAR, Sam."

Sam sighed. "Well, okay. If dart golf is out, now what should we do?"

"I'm willing to give _European Fun Guys 8 _a shot. Maybe it could be one of those 'so bad it's good' kind of things," Freddie said as he walked back in the direction of the DVDs.

"Oh no!" Sam shouted as she ran after him. "NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!"

"What's the big deal?" Freddie asked as she caught up to him.

An idea flashed in Sam's head. "Tell you what," she said, with a quasi-seductive tone lurking in her voice as she put her hands on Freddie's shoulders. "I have a better idea. That massage you gave me was really, really, amazing. I really, really wanna return the favor. How's that?" she asked, leaning into his ear as she began rubbing.

"That is kinda nice," Freddie said apprehensively, wondering where this could possibly be going.

"Yeah," Sam continued as she kneaded his shoulders. "You just relax, and let me do my thing . . . There . . . And after a while of this, then, maybe . . ." Sam's grip on Freddie's shoulders tightened into a Vulcan nerve pinch as she cooed softly in his ear. "We can take a nap."

Freddie slumped to the floor, unconscious, with a thud.

"I really didn't wanna have to do that," she told Freddie's unresponsive form as she grabbed the _European Fun Guys_ DVDs, hid them in her mom's underwear drawer, and dragged him back to the sofa.

Despite her bad shoulder, she managed, with difficulty, to pull Freddie up onto the sofa. Sitting for a few moments with an unconscious Freddie propped against her, Sam looked around the room, shrugged, and began giving him a massage.


	10. The Syphilis Fairy

**_Disclaimer: _**_I don't own iCarly, and I don't own the characters._

* * *

><p>Freddie allowed himself to drift pleasantly between the states of sleep and wakefulness for a while. He somehow felt more relaxed and refreshed than he could ever recall himself feeling before, and that was in spite of the incredibly intense, strange dreams he had. For some bizarre reason, they had all heavily involved Sam and she was – doing things to him, and those things were – simply amazing. There really were no words for it. He'd had dreams like that before, but never quite like <em>that<em>. He didn't know what to make of it, especially with it being Sam and all, but, he figured, as a teenage guy, he'd take what he could get, even in the dream department. He fluttered his eyes open for a brief instant before closing them again; he was sleeping on the Pucketts' couch, he determined. That's when the thought hit him: he had absolutely no idea how he'd gotten there. Now a little worry began to creep in. He tried to think back to what the last thing he could remember was – he and Sam were arguing about something. What was it? Right, one of her cockamamie money-making schemes. It was something really awful, he recalled, but he couldn't remember what. What if Sam had knocked him out and drug him to the couch? No, that's crazy, he thought – the sort of thing only his mom would think of. Wait, what if her money-making idea was to get involved in black market organ harvesting on behalf of the Burmese military, and she'd knocked him out, taken one of his kidneys, stitched him back up, dragged him to the sofa to recuperate, and now his kidney was halfway to Rangoon? Oh God, he thought again, I'm turning into my mother. This really has to stop. Besides, if there's one thing Sam Puckett would never do, it would be to go in cahoots with something as organized as a military dictatorship. Just then Freddie felt something tighten its grip enveloping him and nuzzle into his back as he heard Sam's voice sigh, "Mmmmm" contentedly. He opened his eyes again and looked over. He had to do a double take, because he couldn't believe what he'd just seen the first time. Sam was asleep with him – sleeping with him – on the sofa, completely wrapped around him with a big smile on her face and – was she spooning him? – Yeah. Yeah, kinda looks like it. How the heck did _this _happen? His thoughts raced again. His total lack of knowledge as to how they got there, the strangely relaxed feeling, Sam asleep, wrapped around him like a sushi roll with an insane grin on her face, the dreams – oh my, the dreams – and . . . Oh no, oh dear God, it all made sense now. There must have been a gas leak or something, and as they were getting all loopy before they passed out, one thing led to another and — he inexplicably found himself trying desperately to recall the nursery rhyme his mom told him on his first day of preschool about girls, chlamydia, and the Syphilis Fairy who takes naughty boys' noses. How many years did he have, he wondered, before his nose fell off? His mind's eye shifted to a Renaissance doctor's office. "Well, Mrs. Benson," said the doctor, who was wearing a cologne-loaded medieval plague mask, "I'm afraid your little Freddie has syphilis. There's really nothing we can do." "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Mrs. Benson shrieked. "Just call us again in a couple of years, and we'll get him fitted for a prosthetic nose." "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" she shrieked again. Wait! Wait! Get ahold of yourself, Benson! This is stupid! You really are turning into your mother, he thought to himself. Time to stop thinking like that. At any rate, he wondered, wouldn't it be just his luck that something did happen for the first time and of course he couldn't remember a darn thing about it? He hoped he didn't suck. Oh no, wait, he mused, maybe he should have sucked. "Suck" is one of those words that can have different meanings in different situations, so it could be either a good thing or a bad thing. Kind of like "bromide." It could mean a trite platitude, or it could be a bromine (symbol Br, atomic number 35)-based chemical compound. Mm, briny. There are lots of words that have totally different meanings like that. Then there are those words that are really, really close but mean totally different things. Like "trite" and "tripe." Don't want to confuse those two. English sure is a strange language. Come to think of it, is there a more awkward-feeling word in your mouth than "language?" He mouthed "language" to test it out. Nope, didn't think so, he thought —

"GIMME THE BLANCMANGES, AND NOBODY GETS HURT!" Sam shouted in her sleep, startled herself awake, sat bolt upright, and sent Freddie tumbling to the floor. "Oh, hey there, Benson, you're up, too?" she asked serenely as she looked down.

"Um, Sam?" Freddie asked tentatively, as he felt around his lower back for stitches and found none. "How, uh, did we end up here, like, like, uh, this?" _Okay, at least she didn't harvest my organs_, he thought.

"Whadaya mean?" Sam asked.

_Oh dear God, it's probably the other possibility_, he thought as his eyes widened in horror. "I, uh, mean . . ." He struggled to keep this as vaguely un-awkward as possible. "I mean, um – I wasn't, like, really lousy or anything?" he blurted.

"Huh?" Sam asked in total confusion.

_Oh, duh_, Freddie realized. _We're still wearing clothes_. That thought actually made him more confused. "I mean," he asked again, "how on Earth did I – we – end up here? On the sofa? I can't remember it at all. What happened?"

"Oh, that," Sam said with a nervous laugh that tried to pass for nonchalant. "We were just, uh, tryin' to figure out what to do while the wall dries, came over here, and — looks like we both just fell asleep, huh?"

"Oh, yeah!" Freddie recalled with a great sense of relief. "Weren't we thinking about watching a movie or —"

"Well, obviously we never got around to that," Sam said as she abruptly cut him off. "'Sides, it's a little later now and I'm gettin' hungry. How 'bout we make some of that stuff we got?"

"Sounds like a plan," Freddie responded, and it was Sam's turn to feel a vast sense of relief.


	11. Internal Bleeding, Premature Death

**_Disclaimer: _**_I don't own _iCarly_, and I don't own the characters. I don't own a mace, either._

* * *

><p>"Great," Sam answered as she sifted through one of the kitchen cupboards. "Crock pot's in my room." She handed Freddie a half gallon plastic measuring cup and picked up a one pound bag of red beans. "Fill this the whole way up with water and come on back; I got something I wanna show you I think we could use on <em>iCarly<em>," she said as she walked back to her bedroom.

When Freddie arrived, Sam's face was hidden deep in her closet as she rifled through various items. He poured the water into the crock pot on top of her dresser as she muttered, "Now where is that?" while tossing aside an air rifle, a hair dryer, a makeup kit, and a pair of nunchucks. "Want some beef jerky, Fredward?" Sam attempted to mumble with full mouth while still partially entombed in the closet. "It'll be a couple hours 'till the stuff in the pot'll be ready."

"No thanks," Freddie called. "The water's in the pot; anything else?"

Sam, with her mouth still full, replied with her head deep within the closet's bowels, "Pour the beans in, grab a couple bay leaves from the dresser, stick 'em in, put on the lid, crank it up on high, and let it go 'till they get soft."

"You keep herbs in your dresser?" Freddie asked incredulously.

"Yeah, top drawer, below my underwear," Sam called back from within the closet as a My Little Pony and a mace went flying from it. "Doesn't everybody?"

"I've never heard of anybody doing that," Freddie answered.

"Really?" Sam wondered in jerky-filled disbelief as a hunting knife and a can of body spray flew to join their compatriots on the floor in front of the closet. "My mom always said when I was little that your underwear drawer's where you should always keep your herbs."

Freddie wasn't altogether sure what to make of that statement as he opened Sam's oak veneered solid plywood dresser, took a deep breath, and gingerly lifted up a pile of her boxer shorts to reveal the contents of a surprisingly well-stocked spice rack. The bay leaves weren't there, and he quickly realized he would have no choice but to look further under a stack of frilly things of uncertain function. Swallowing hard, he lifted the items with his right hand while attempting to shield his vision from anything but the very bottom of the drawer with his left. He finally located the bay leaves stashed between tarragon and star anise. He fished out two large bay leaves and added them to the pot.

While Freddie was looking for the bay leaves, Sam located the object of her quarry in the closet, strapped it on, and sneaked up behind him. "Hello, Clarice," she said breathily as he turned to face her. Freddie screamed in abject terror, sending the crock pot's lid flying across the room.

Freddie's reaction was far beyond anything Sam had anticipated or intended. "Sorry, Freddie," she said apologetically. "I didn't mean to scare you THAT badly – I was thinkin' we could do some kinda 'Angry Birds' spoof with this thing on the show; whadaya think?"

Freddie remained wide-eyed and petrified, staring in Sam's general direction. A high-pitched "Erp," was all his voice was able to muster.

By now genuinely worried, Sam asked, "What's wrong?" as she crashed down onto her bed and patted a space on the mattress next to herself with her hand. "Have a seat; what's eatin' ya, kid?"

Freddie, still petrified, somehow managed to take a tiny step backward. This time he was able to eventually get out a word. "Ma - ma - ma - ma - mask," he stammered weakly.

"Wha-? Oh, wait, this?" Sam asked as she remembered what she had covering the top half of her face. She grasped her intricately patterned black-and-white replica plague mask by its long, hooked nose and pulled it up over her forehead.

Freddie now looked minutely less rigid. She pulled the mask off her head completely, and he relaxed slightly more. "Whoa," she realized, "me wearing this thing really skeeves the heck outta you – what's goin' on?" she asked with care as she patted the empty side of the bed again. "Take a load off and tell Momma; you'll feel better." She tossed the mask onto the side of the floor away from Freddie, and he instinctively relaxed some more as it left his line of vision.

Freddie blinked. "Come on . . ." Sam encouraged.

"It's . . . aaah . . . just, uh, nothing," he said haltingly as he remained rooted in place.

"Nothing doesn't make somebody act like that," Sam replied firmly as she beckoned him to come closer.

"Noth-Nothing big," Freddie hedged as he took a few steps toward the vacant spot on the bed. "Just a, uh, sort of like, uh, a bad dream . . . or something." He sat down.

"Bad dream, huh?" Sam said thoughtfully as she sat up from her reclining posture on the bed, grabbed Freddie's shoulders from behind, and pulled him down to a supine position. She reached over him to her nightstand.

"Sam, what are you doing?" Freddie asked nervously.

"It's your lucky day, Fredward," Sam replied breezily as she fished a notepad and a pencil from her nightstand. "I've got some experience with this," she said as she smiled over him with a look that she intended to be comforting but came off as slightly insane.

"Experience with, uh, what, exactly?"

"I used to have the same nightmare over and over again where a monster'd eat my soup," Sam began as she climbed back to her side of the bed, fluffed up a pillow and sat up propped against it.

"A monster would eat your soup . . ." Freddie repeated in disbelief as he moved to sit up as well. Sam reached over and pushed him back down.

"Yup," she affirmed. "Couldn't get it outta my head. Finally, Spencer got me to tell him about it, and he got me to face my fear."

"Face your fear how?" Freddie asked warily. He tried to sit up again, and Sam again pushed him back down.

"He left some soup out for me one day, and when I started eatin' it, he jumped out in a monster outfit. I beat the snot outta him with a soup ladle. Felt great – haven't had that dream since. Eggheads call it 'behavior therapy' or something like that. So now," Sam continued as she put pencil to paper, "you're gonna tell me all about your bad dream."

"I really don't think that's a good idea," Freddie objected.

"Come on," Sam encouraged. "What's the worst that could happen?"

"Internal bleeding, premature death," he muttered under his breath while staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.

"Huh?" Sam asked, bewildered.

"Okay, I'll tell you," Freddie began as looked over at Sam and his mind raced wildly in attempting to determine just how much he should tell her and how to fudge the rest. "It was this thing – I don't know what it was really, if it was a dream or not or both or what – back there on the couch."

Sam briefly looked up from her note-taking with a thinly veiled look of apprehension.

"I still can't remember how I got there," Freddie continued with his eyes closed as Sam's face turned red.

"Weird," Sam said with raised eyebrows, half to herself.

"I know, right?" Freddie asked as he turned his face toward Sam again and she conveniently held her notebook between her face and his line of sight. "Anyway, all I can remember is we were talking about watching a movie or something, and then I was suddenly in, like, this weird dream that felt like a half-dream or something, and," he continued apprehensively as he resumed staring at the ceiling, "you were in it. It was so weird; it had to be a dream."

The tip of Sam's pencil broke. "Oh, hey, look at that," she said with nervous nonchalance. "Sooo . . . What happened?" she asked as she reached for a pen, unsure whether she wanted to hear the answer.

"Well," Freddie gulped nervously as he decided he would tell her about half of what he dreamt, "you were – this is so crazy –" He chuckled at the ridiculousness of the thought, "giving me this backrub or massage or something that was just incredible. Weird thing is I feel like I just got an amazing massage, even now. I mean, it had to be a dream, 'cause there's no way you'd do that –"

"Yup, no way," Sam quickly agreed, tremendously grateful that Freddie's gaze remained fixed upon the ceiling. "Musta been dreaming. Then what?"

Freddie decided it would be best to skip over a quite a lot. "Well, I dreamed I was just laying there for a long time, and I just felt – I don't know – like, warm and . . . home. Like, like, a home I never knew I had or something, and I knew I'd miss it as soon as I woke up, if that makes any sense."

Sam struggled mightily to maintain a blank facial expression. "I'm kinda not seeing how this is a nightmare or where the mask fits in."

"Well," Freddie continued, "then, suddenly, I was, like, somehow thrown back to being a little kid again, and there was my mom . . ."

". . . And there it is," Sam continued with a all-too-knowing sigh.

"Yeah," Freddie agreed. "Anyway, you know the old nursery rhyme about the Syphilis Fairy?"

"The WHAT?" Sam wondered aloud.

"The Syphilis Fairy," Freddie repeated matter-of-factly, as Sam looked bewildered. "You know, flies through the air, steals boys' noses, has a face that looks like that mask, and she puts the noses in her beak?" Sam was dumbfounded. Freddie continued, hoping to jog her memory, "It's a nursery rhyme. My mom used to tell me it when I was little. '_The Syphilis Fairy flits through the night to punish boys naughty by candlelight_' and all that . . . Any of this ring a bell?" he asked.

"Holy chiz, Fredward. Your mom's a bigger freak than I ever imagined," Sam murmured.

"At least my mom doesn't tell kids to put 'herbs' in their underwear drawers," Freddie said defensively, "and at least I didn't take her advice literally."

"Seriously, dude, I don't think that's a real nursery rhyme. Only your mom could dream up something that sick," Sam said with a vague twinge of admiration. She smiled suddenly as an idea flashed in her mind. "Okay, Fredward," she said abruptly. "I think I know what's going on here, and it's time for you to face your fear. Just remember I'm doing this for your benefit, alright?"

Before Freddie could object, in one swift, fluid motion, Sam reached below the edge of the bed, grabbed her mask, pulled it down over her face, jumped on top of him before he could escape, pinned down his wrists and ankles, and shouted, "BLEARGH! I'm the Syphilis Fairy! I'm gonna take your nose! What are you gonna do about it? BLEARGH!"

Freddie froze at first but came to himself when Sam took one of her hands off his wrist and reached for his nose. "Oh, yeah?" he shouted. "At least I don't have herbed PANTIES!"

Sam threw both of her hands to her ears. "AAAH! You know I hate that word!"

"PANTIES!" Freddie repeated.

"AAAAH! STOP IT!" Sam shouted again with her ears covered as he easily rolled her off of him.

"PANTIES! PANTIES! PANTIES! PANTIES! PANTIES!" Freddie continued to shout as she quickly backed into a corner of the room with her hands clasped behind the back of her head and her arms covering her ears.

He pulled the mask off Sam's face. "You know?" he said pleasantly, "I do feel a lot better now. Thanks, Sam!" he said as he examined the mask in his hands.

"Anytime," she said weakly.

He put the mask on himself. "Not really all that scary," he commented. "Sort of cool looking, actually. You're right, we could use this for a bit on the show." Freddie reached his hand down to a shaken-looking Sam, who grabbed him to pull herself up.

"So now that we've scarred each other for life, now what?" Sam asked as Freddie pulled off the mask.


	12. The Scientific Term Is Nerdgasm

**_Ubiquitous Disclaimer:_**_ I don't own iCarly, and I don't own the characters. I was going to say the same thing about T.S. Eliot's _The Waste Land_, William Shakespeare's _Henry IV _plays, and Edmund Spenser's _The Faerie Queene_, but then I realized they're all in the public domain, so I can do whatever the heck I want with them. That's right, suck it, Shakespeare! As for how I would have any sort of familiarity with the setting for most of this chapter, all I have to say is, "No comment."_

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><p>"You said we have, what," Freddie answered, "a couple of hours before the beans get soft?"<p>

"Yeah," Sam nodded while picking herself up from off the floor in her bedroom corner, "we've got a buncha time to kill."

"Hmm," Freddie thought. "Well, we could always watch a movie or see what's on TV or something."

"Ahhhhhhhh," she intoned as desperation flooded her eyes. "How 'bout I take you to a little cockfighting ring my uncle Buzz runs across town? We don't have to be all gussied up for that," she said as she indicated their disheveled, white-speckled appearances.

"Uh, I think I'll pass," Freddie said. A smile crossed his face and he chuckled out loud.

"What?" Sam asked menacingly. "You bangin' on my uncle Buzz again?"

"No! No, no, no," Freddie responded emphatically. "I just thought of something totally ridiculous. You'd want to do it even less than I'd want to go to a, a . . . uh . . ."

"Just say it! It only sounds wrong," Sam laughed.

"Cockfight," Freddie finished in an embarrassed tone.

"There. Was that so bad?" she asked, pinching his cheek like a doting grandmother.

"Actually, I'm pretty sure cockfighting IS really wrong, even if it didn't sound that way, too," Freddie said.

Sam glowered for a moment before changing the subject. "So what's this funny thing I'd never wanna do?" she asked as she cast a furtive, wary glance in the direction of the television in the living room.

"Since we already look ridiculous, we'd sort of fit in with everybody else looking silly, and it's in that big park maybe a mile from here. Problem is even I think it's nerdy," Freddie explained.

"Out with it!" Sam demanded.

"Well, the, uh, Washington State Renaissance Faire is going on this weekend," Freddie replied nervously with an askance glance.

Sam looked once more toward the living room, turned her gaze to the wall hiding her mom's bedroom and dresser, and quickly made her decision. "Awesome. Let's do it," she said with forced enthusiasm as she grabbed his arm and pulled him out the bedroom door.

"You're kidding, right?" Freddie asked.

"Nope."

He halted. "Sam," he demanded, "what are you planning on doing to those poor Ren Faire schmoes once we're there?"

"Nothing," she answered as she looked into Freddie's disbelieving face. "Really, I think it's a great idea. I wanna go just to go. Seriously." He still looked unconvinced, so she continued, "Let's get outta the house for a few more hours. No tricks up my sleeve this time, okay?"

"Speaking of sleeves," Freddie said, gesturing to her designated barbecue-eating undergarment, "you might want to finally consider putting a shirt back on."

"Oh, right," she said as she looked down absentmindedly and traipsed back to her bedroom. She returned wearing a Penny-Tee that read "Bodkin Rub." "In the spirit of things enough?" she asked, pointing to her shirt.

Freddie smiled and shook his head.

Immediately upon arriving, Sam began to wonder if she'd made the right decision. Sure, she'd gotten Freddie out of the house and away from needing to fudge an explanation for his permanently scarring discovery of Spencer's appearances in her mom's sketchy collection of "special" movies, but upon surveying the unreal Elizabethan city setup and the absurdly costumed crowd that flowed over a fake London Bridge, she couldn't help but feel she'd made a terrible mistake. So many, she reflected, she had not thought dorkdom had undone so many . . . Still, she had to admit all the people openly walking around wearing tied-up swords and random medieval weapons was kind of cool in a way. Maybe she could have brought her mace here and gotten away with it —

"So many nerds," Freddie muttered to himself.

"Huh?" Sam snapped out of her thoughts. "Weird to hear YOU call other people nerds. It's a dork festival, alright, but I don't see how this is any different from one of your precious _Galaxy Wars_ conventions. Or Webicon, for that matter."

"Nobody at a _Galaxy Wars _convention or Webicon would wear tights, a codpiece, a ruffled shirt, slippers, and a goofy hat at the same time. I'll have you know we've got standards!" Freddie argued.

"Really?" Sam asked sarcastically. "I hadn't noticed, Nub-Nub."

"The character's name is Nug-Nug!" he objected.

"_Och drin alchdurt zhuer ust!_" Sam shouted.

Freddie stopped walking and eyed her quizzically. "Did you just tell me to 'blow it out my' . . . I'm not sure what . . . in HORCLOP?"

"You'll never know," she smiled tauntingly.

"So, where to?" he asked as a confused look lingered on his face.

"Let's follow the guy who's overcompensating for something," she replied.

"Overcompens . . . what? Where?" Freddie asked bewilderedly.

"Over there!" She pointed ahead to a large, slovenly, bespectacled man wearing entirely too much leather. "Looka the size of that dude's codpiece! THAT'S the look of a dork who's under the mistaken impression he knows what he's doing; we'll tail him."

Freddie tried unsuccessfully to stifle a loud chortle.

"It's okay to join me on the Dark Side," she said encouragingly as she patted Freddie's head. "We got cookies . . . And a better dental plan. Helps with all the cookies."

"I think I'll pass," he replied with raised eyebrows as they continued down the dirt path past a stand selling tacky faux Celtic-themed trinkets and shoulder-mounted dragon puppets.

A young man in a jester hat approached the pair from the left, stopped them, and asked in a horrendous attempt at an English accent, "Pardon, milady, where be the privies?"

Sam grabbed his shoulders, kneed him in the crotch, and shouted, "THEY'LL BE EVEN FURTHER UP THERE IF YOU ASK ME THAT AGAIN!"

As the man slowly sank to his knees and fell over sideways, Freddie whispered in her ear, "I think he was asking where the bathrooms are."

"Oh." Sam looked blankly down at the man, who was rocking back and forth on the ground, moaning. "Just got here. Don't know where the can is." She paused and looked ahead to a stand in the distance. "Huh. 'Steak-On-A-Stake' sounds interesting. Let's go there, Fredifer." She stomped off toward the food stands, leaving Freddie to quietly grimace, "Sorry," to the man writhing in pain on the ground before running off to join her.

Moments later, Freddie sat at a small circular table, watching in disbelief as Sam had already devoured half of an enormous slab of beef impaled on an oversized skewer. "Man, this is bangin'" Sam enthused with a full mouth while pounding her fist down on the table top. "Whoever thought of putting a giant hunka medium-rare cow on a big stick shoulda won a Nobel Prize or something. And how do so many of these people get to walk around with real swords and stuff?"

"Um, you've got a little . . ." Freddie said, trying to hide his mild nausea while he tapped the corner of his mouth with his finger to alert Sam of the bloody beef juice that was dripping down her chin.

"Oh," Sam mumbled with a full mouth as she polished off the last of the meat and wiped her mouth with her forearm.

Freddie looked around at some of the other food stands and laughed. "I seriously doubt they had pizza in late 16th-century Britain," he said, pointing to a place called "Italian Pies." "Or tacos, steak fries, and kettle corn."

"Weird," Sam said as she dropped her empty, ruddy stake down on the table, "I figured you'd be all over this kinda chiz, since you are with everything else lame."

"No way!" Freddie said emphatically.

"Really?" Sam wondered curiously. "How's this any different from all that Sci-Fi techie crap of yours?"

"Science fiction looks forward," Freddie reflected. "This looks backward, badly. It's like some twisted funhouse mirror of a rosy-tinted past held up by people who can barely function in the present."

"So?" Sam asked, as she observed someone walk by with a peace-tied broadsword.

"What do you mean, 'So?'"

"They're havin' fun with it. Let 'em. Probably the only excitement most of these geeks get," she replied while eyeing another person walking by with sheathed daggers strapped to his ankles.

Freddie regarded Sam curiously. "Are you going soft, Puckett? Or did we suddenly, like, switch roles or something?"

"Ah, maybe it's just the Steak-On-A-Stake talkin' . . . Let's go see where all these swords and daggers and stuff keep comin' from," she said with a smile as she pushed her seat back from the table and stood. "Looks like there's maps over there. You coming?"

Several minutes later, after first getting sidetracked by a replica medieval catapult demonstration, Sam stood in front of a kiosk while intensely studying a festival map in her hands. Freddie stood behind her with a profoundly amused smirk on his face. "Oh, cool," she said while pointing off into the horizon, "They've got working blacksmith and swordsmith areas over that way."

"Wait," Freddie asked with an accusatory smile, "you're actually getting into all this, aren't you?"

"What? No . . . no," Sam said with a defensive tone in her voice. "Well . . just the stuff that involves fire and weapons."

"And beef on a stick," Freddie added.

"Yeah . . . and beef on a stick."

"And catapults."

". . . and catapults," she conceded.

"So, pretty much everywhere we've been so far," he continued.

"Shut up," she warned.

On their way to the forge, the two stopped to listen to a group of singers perform an _a capella_ piece that was ostensibly about a "cuckoo," although it wasn't long before Sam was pretty sure it wasn't actually supposed to be about birds or clocks.

"Who knew old songs could be so risque?" Freddie wondered aloud after the song had finished and as the gathered crowd applauded.

"What are you talkin' about?" Sam asked in disbelief. "They were always like that – they just hid it good. Like anything Bessie Smith ever did, and there's no way Robert Johnson was really singin' about record players, cars, or squeezin' lemons."

"Who are Bessie Smith and Robert Johnson?" Freddie asked.

Sam looked at him as though he was a yellow Labrador puppy with a terminal brain tumor, and she slowly shook her head from side to side while gazing groundward. "You poor, deprived thing, you," she said sadly under her breath.

"Deprived of what?"

The look on Sam's face turned to one of unsettled worry. "Don't tell me you think 'Little Red Corvette' is just about a little red Corvette, too."

"Well, isn't it?" he asked.

"Dude . . ." she intoned slowly with raised eyebrows.

"And since when did you listen to Prince?"

"Don't . . . much," she replied. "Bit more up Melanie and my mom's alleys."

"Oh, right," Freddie said incredulously, "mythical Melanie again."

Sam chortled.

"What was that for?" he demanded.

"Nothing. Nothing at all," Sam said with a smirk, and she began impishly humming "Raspberry Beret" along the rest of the way.

When they got to the forge, the smiths were in the midst of demonstrating the early stages of how swords and hatchet blades were painstakingly pounded into shape by hand. As Freddie struggled mightily to feign interest, Sam watched in rapt fascination and refused to let him wander off until about fifteen minutes later, when they headed to the opposite side of the path and a tent which sold the forge's finished products. Sam excitedly bounded in with the expression of a child turned loose in a toy store, while Freddie lingered in the entryway and examined a couple of fencing epees with a critical eye.

Sam careened through the tent wide-eyed as she took in a variety of swords, knives, daggers, and even a few Malay krises before settling on one that particularly tickled her fancy.

"Awesome dagger. How much?" Sam asked a salesperson as she nearly drooled on the glass case displaying a fluted silver double-edged knife with a wide, elaborately curled quillion and black handle.

"It's an athame," the goateed man answered curtly.

"Gesundheit. How much?" she repeated.

"If you have to ask, you can't afford it," he responded, clearly annoyed.

"Probably right . . . _Testa di cazzo_."

"What?"

"Just, ah, don't know," Sam hedged before muttering "_cornuto_" under her breath while walking away with her index and pinkie fingers raised on her right hand.

"What was all that?" Freddie asked after he'd observed the whole scene from the entryway.

"Just tellin' it like it is. Let's blow this popsicle stand," she said while swaggering out of the tent.

Her dour mood quickly dissipated when the pair reached the midway. "NO WAY!" she shouted gleefully after noticing a stand where people could throw knives at a bulls-eye target for prizes. "Momma's gonna win you a pair of fairy wings, Fredly!" Sam continued, pointing to the large, pink, strap-on, gossamer wings hanging in the corner among the prizes. "Aww, Dude! They even have a pull chain on 'em to flutter! What do I gotta do to win those, Mistress Quickly?" she asked the attendant, who was dressed like a medieval lady of the night.

Freddie was astonished that it seemed Sam actually had paid attention in English class on at least one occasion.

"That's one of the toughest things to win," the attendant advised. "For five dollars, you get three knives. To win that, you have to hit inside the bulls-eye's center ring on all three throws. I haven't seen anybody do it all day."

Freddie's facial expression, which darkened considerably when Sam told him she was going to try for the wings, brightened immensely at the attendant's words.

"You haven't seen me yet," Sam replied and produced a five-dollar bill. She took one throwing knife in each hand and the third in her mouth, and she tossed the first knife blade-first with her right hand. After spinning wildly along its path, it landed dead center in the bulls-eye. "That's one," she said as she faced Freddie with a wicked grin and took the knife out of her mouth.

The attendant pulled the knife from the target as Sam readied for her second throw. Again she hit the middle of the target. "Two," she said to Freddie. "Starting to feel all a-flutter?" she asked with a broad smile.

"Nobody's done more than two today," the attendant said as she pulled the second knife from the target. "A couple of people got the first two, but they missed on the third try."

"Momma doesn't miss," Sam said confidently. She took the blade in her hand and tossed the final knife in what appeared to be a very cavalier fashion, but again it landed in the exact center of the target. Sam didn't even watch it go in. Immediately as the blade left her hand, she turned to face Freddie rather than observe the flight path and began singing the chorus to "I Believe I Can Fly" tauntingly.

"And we have a winner!" the attendant shouted, amazed. Freddie looked crestfallen.

The attendant handed Sam the wings, which she raised above her head triumphantly before dancing spastically in a circle around Freddie. "WHAAOOO! Oh yeah! Uh-huh! Momma wins! Again!" she sang. "Ready to get your wings, Fredifer?"

"No, Sam."

"Come on!"

"No! I mean it—"

"Just put on—"

"Sam—"

"Slip 'em over—"

"I'm not gonna—"

"Just for a minute—"

"There's no way—"

"FINE!" Sam shouted as she gave up the struggle, "I guess I'll just have to wear 'em. How do I look?" she asked after she slipped on and adjusted the wings.

"Stupid," Freddie replied.

"Two things wrong with that answer," Sam said, holding up two fingers on a hand while using her other to flap her wings with the pull chain. "One. If you're gonna do a Rosie Perez impression, at least do it well. Yours was 'stupid.' Two. For somebody who hangs out with a couple of girls all the time, you got a lot to learn about talking to them. You shoulda said something like, 'Samantha, you look absolutely ravishing, like a radiant vision sent from above' or some B.S. like that. Just some friendly advice . . . Now, again, how do I look?"

"Umm," Freddie began uncomfortably, "Samantha, you're a stunning vision of astonishing beauty . . ."

Sam slapped him upside the head.

"OWW! What was THAT for?"

"That's for talkin' like a douche," she said matter-of-factly.

"But I just said the kind of stuff you told me to say!" he protested.

"I don't take my advice; since when should you?"

Freddie shook his head dejectedly, but he quickly perked up as they walked toward another midway game stand. "You're just going to keep wearing those the rest of the time we're here?" he asked.

"Sure, why not?"

"You do realize," he continued with a smirk, "you're quickly reaching critical mass on the geek scale."

"No," she insisted. "I don't say stuff like 'critical mass.'"

"True," he said, "but I think you might be just a step away from starting to yammer about stuff like 'quaffing flagons of mead.'"

"Watch it, Fredifer . . . Oh, cool!" she enthused, "What's this?"

Instead of throwing knives, the stand they approached involved throwing small hatchets at a target. The prizes were also substantially better than at the previous stand. This was, the attendant who dressed as a mid 17th-century cavalier explained, because the odds of getting a single-sided hatchet to stick in the target were much slimmer than that of a throwing knife.

While he talked, Sam's gaze fixated on one item hanging in the back among the prizes. "So what do I gotta do to win that swept-hilt rapier and scabbard back there?" she asked.

"It's just about impossible," the attendant said. "You have to hit dead center in the target on all three throws with the upper corner of the hatchet blade every time. You might be really good throwing knives," he said, looking at her wings from the other stand, "but there's no way you can get lucky enough to hit the same spot with the same point of a hatchet each time. If you land the hatchet, anywhere on the blade, in the middle of the target on all three tries, you'll get one of these shoulder-perching dragon puppets instead. I don't get to give out many of those."

"We'll see about that," Sam said, slapping down a five dollar bill and grasping the first hatchet handed to her. Her first throw landed in the center of the target, with the upper tip of the hatchet blade buried in it.

"OH YEAH!" Sam shouted gleefully.

As she was throwing the hatchets, Shawn from the Mathletes club at Ridgeway walked by and spotted Sam and Freddie. "Hey, Freddie!" he called.

Freddie did a double take at Shawn's outfit, which appeared to resemble something out of the _Lord of the Rings_ movies, if the costumes had been designed by dementia patients. "Hi, Shawn," he waved.

"Wait," Shawn asked incredulously, "Is that—"

"Puckett. Yup," Freddie finished.

Another hatchet flew from Sam's hands and buried itself in the middle of the target by the top corner of its curved blade.

"At the Renaissance Faire?" Shawn asked in total disbelief.

Sam spun around to face Freddie and Shawn. "That's two!" she shouted excitedly while jumping up and down.

"And enjoying herself," Freddie said to his wide-mouthed Mathlete compatriot.

"I don't believe this," Shawn continued.

"Believe it," Freddie said as Sam took aim with the third and final hatchet.

The hatchet made a direct hit in the target's middle, again with the blade's upper corner. The astonished attendant headed for the sword as Sam jumped up, threw her fists in the air triumphantly, and bellowed, "YES! MOMMA GETS A BRAND NEW RAPIER! Bow before the Faerie Queene, Fredward!" as she danced around maniacally.

"What's going on here?" asked a bewildered Shawn. "What's up with Sam?"

"I believe," Freddie replied with arms crossed and a profoundly amused facial expression, "the scientific term is 'nerdgasm.'"


	13. The Village Strega

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own iCarly, and I don't own the characters. And, no; I never, ever, ever, ever get tired of saying that. I also don't own any of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories, but I think they're all in the public domain by now. I also don't own the rights to anything by either David Bowie or David Bowie's Area. Hopefully I'll be able to get the next few chapters up sooner than it took to get this one done._

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><p>Frothy lolled languidly across the length of the living room sofa as the evening sun cascaded across his belly. It was just a matter of time before those two weird bipeds that couldn't seem to keep their hands off each other no matter how much they professed to dislike it returned. Not that he minded; that yellowish looking one was his, anyway — she was his personal assistant, housekeeper, masseuse, chef, and nighttime pillow. The other one was, unlike most of the people who intruded in his home sometimes, more or less tolerable, seemed to make the corners of his assistant's mouth turn upward a lot, and he even made himself useful as a hairball receptacle. Still, it was nice to have the sofa and the sunlight to himself for a while. Soon, though, that yellow one had better show up and use those opposable thumbs to get him some food.<p>

Frothy's eyes widened. What if, he wondered, those servile bipeds were finally becoming dimly aware of their real status in the world? That other one might be an agitator who was only pretending to be nice to him. What if he'd convinced the yellow one to go on strike? That was it, he resolved. If she didn't come back and feed him soon, he'd have to meet with the other felines in the neighborhood tonight. The last thing any of the neighborhood cats wanted to have to do was unleash "Operation _Cats of Ulthar_" again, but they all knew that it was, in the long run, best to nip these sorts of things right in the bud . . .

As if on cue, the front door swung open and those strange two-legged things emerged in the middle of an animated discussion. Relieved they were back, but not wanting to put up with them clanking around nor having any interest in what they might have to say, Frothy yawned, stretched, hopped off the couch, and scampered into Pam Puckett's pleasantly sardine-scented bedroom.

"I still can't believe they hauled me off to be in the witchcraft trial," Sam said.

"Why are you surprised?" Freddie asked. "When the actors playing Queen Elizabeth I and her retinue go by, I'm pretty sure you're supposed to shout, 'God save the Queen!' — not 'Mary, Queen of Scots was better you bloody ginger cack-handed stale!'"

"You gotta admit the looks on their faces were priceless," Sam grinned as she lovingly placed her new rapier on the coffee table. "At least I got to uphold the family tradition somehow."

"What do you mean?"

"My uncle Carmine once told me my great-great grandmother was the village _strega_ somewhere outside Palermo."

"How on Earth does somebody get the job of 'village _strega_' in the middle of Podunk, Italy?" Freddie wondered as he crossed the living room.

"Sicily," she corrected him. "Don't know," Sam explained while plopping on the sofa, "Supposed to be hereditary or something."

Freddie stopped dead in his tracks. "Wow," he said, putting his hand to his forehead, "it all makes sense now."

"What 'all makes sense now?'" Sam asked with a mocking tone as she lifted her head from the armrest.

"Pretty much the last six years or so."

"Ooh!" Sam squealed gleefully as she got up from the sofa. "This gives me a whole new way to torment you!" She walked over to Freddie and mussed his hair. "You'll never know how many times I might have just —" She surreptitiously plucked a single hair from his head. "– Grabbed a little something of yours –" She dangled the hair in front of his face. "– And done who-knows-what unspeakable things with it to help make your day a little more messed up."

Freddie regarded her with a smirk. "Sam, that's a lamer attempt than 'Counsuela's Revenge.'"

She looked at Freddie's skeptical expression, regarded the strand of hair, and dropped it to the ground. "Pssh – you're no fun anymore, Fredweird. What happened to the easy to push around dweeb?"

"So you're saying I'm not a dweeb?" Freddie asked hopefully.

"I'm saying you're not **as** easy to push around," Sam clarified as she walked back to her bedroom. "Beans are ready!" she bellowed from the back of the house before reappearing in the hallway.

"So now what?"

"Start choppin' stuff, Fredwench," she said as she handed him a sheathed survival knife that she'd apparently kept tucked in her pants nearly all day.

As Freddie began dicing an onion in the kitchen, Sam headed over to the living room stereo and turned it on. He looked curiously in the direction of the living room as he heard a familiar, soft, drum pattern.

"Wait," he said. "This isn't —" He stopped as the opening chord confirmed his suspicion. "_The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars_?" he asked incredulously.

"'Wham, bam, thank you ma'am.'"

"But how would — **You** actually like this?"

"Well, yeah. Who else could spend a whole movie dancin' around in tights with a buncha Muppets and still be awesome?" Sam replied, surprised by Freddie's surprise.

"Weird," he mused. "I just figured the whole science fiction-y 'dude from space' bit would be too — I don't know — nerdy or something —"

"So, wait," Sam interrupted. "**You** actually like this? I figured it'd be too — what's the word? — transgressive — for you."

"Transgressive how?"

"Wow," Sam said, wide-eyed. "I always knew somewhere in ya there was a Dame Edna just waitin' to bust out."

Sam and Freddie spent the next few minutes chopping vegetables and merrily singing along to David Bowie's unearthliest persona together:

_Love is careless in its choosing, sweeping over cross a baby_

_Love descends on those defenseless_

_Idiot love will spark the fusion . . ._

After they finished chopping and sauteing the vegetables and added them to the crock pot, the two collapsed on the sofa together. By this time the album had finished playing, and Freddie turned his head toward the television. Something on the TV stand caught his eye. It was a DVD case labeled simply with a piece of duct tape with the words "_European Fun Guys 3_" scrawled across it in Pam Puckett's barely legible handwriting.

Sam eyes were closed as she draped herself over the edge of the couch, and she was already half asleep. Freddie got up, walked over to the TV stand and picked up the case. He opened it to find an unmarked disc inside. After staring at it for a moment, curiosity got the better of him. He removed the disc from the case and inserted it into the DVD player.

"Whutrwewatchin?" Sam mumbled drowsily from the couch with her eyes still closed.

"Not sure," Freddie said as he returned to the couch. "Disc looks blank, but the case says '_European Fun Guys 3_' on it in duct tape."

Sam's eyes shot wide open with a look of abject horror.

It was too late. The movie had just begun to play.


	14. Must Be French

**_Disclaimer: _**_I don't own anything by Dan Schneider, and I don't own anything by Samuel Beckett. I'm just borrowing some of their characters for a wee smidge._

* * *

><p>There were only a few instances in her life when Samantha Puckett genuinely panicked. This was one of them. How would she possibly dispose of the corpse and scrub out all the inevitable DNA evidence? She'd have to call her cousin with the "cleaning business;" maybe he could get it sorted out . . . Oh, forget that – it wouldn't be long before a heck of a lot of people would notice the nub was missing; what on Earth would she do then? Huge downside of fame right there . . .<p>

"Uh, Sam? What **is **this?"

Freddie's baffled voice temporarily lifted Sam from her train wreck of thought. Her grip began to relax as she realized she was grasping the scabbard of her new rapier tightly in her wet palms. As much as she hated to admit it, she'd really, really miss the dork . . .

"Uhhhh . . ." Sam stammered.

His question was a good one; as Sam gaped dumbly at the screen, she quickly realized that her mom must have mismatched a disc and a case again. This definitely wasn't part of the _European Fun Guys_ series; she was sure of that much — which was definitely a good thing, since it meant that she would likely only have to explain her mom's profound appreciation for a certain subgenre of a certain style of low-budget films, and not a certain best friend's brother's appearance in a few of them right after he dropped out of law school and desperately needed the cash. As far as she new, she, Pam, and Melanie were the only people who'd stumbled across that little secret. The fact that her mom kept trying to find and acquire all the movies Spencer had been in whenever they went on their recent mother-daughter shopping excursions to their favorite windowless stores was beyond skeevy, and Sam had no clue how she'd even begin to explain that one if the need ever arose . . .

"And why are you holding that sword like that?"

"Oh . . . uh . . . just, have an itch," Sam replied with a nervous chuckle as she quickly scratched her forehead with the hilt and placed the rapier down shakily on the coffee table.

"Look, Freddie . . . I – I gotta tell you, my mom's got a thing for movies that are . . . sorta . . . kinda . . . kinda . . ."

Sam trailed off as she wondered what the hell it was they were watching; this really wasn't the usual. It looked like the disc started up in the middle of a bootleg recording of some weird stage show without much of a set. On the stage was a sort-of road, a pathetic looking tree, and two guys who looked like hobos who didn't seem to be doing much of anything other than trying to eat a turnip while waiting around for somebody they called "Godot," which they kept forgetting they were doing. This seemed to be spending a lot more time in exposition than anything else in her mom's special collection . . .

"So this is _European Fun Guys 3_?" Freddie asked in a state of complete bewilderment.

"Uhhh . . . yeah. Sure?" Sam lied unconvincingly as she braced herself for having to explain her mom's taste in movies to Freddie whenever this film, whatever the heck it was, inevitably got down to business. Sure was taking a long time to do it, though . . .

_And there it is_, Sam thought worryingly to herself as two more guys barged in from offstage amidst much shouting. One of them had a rope looped around his neck like a leash and was carrying a humorously large load of items, while the other, better dressed guy was holding the end of the rope and driving the first guy forward with a whip.

"What the . . .!" Freddie exclaimed as the second man to appear on screen cracked his whip and the pair jerked to a comically exaggerated halt.

"I . . . I have no idea," Sam said, wide-eyed.

"Is this **yours**?"

"Must be my mom's," Sam guessed, equally bewildered.

"Who would name somebody 'Pozzo?'" Freddie asked as the on-screen whip-bearer pompously presented himself to the two hobos.

"Who would name somebody 'Fredward?'" Sam shot back. At least her wit was somehow surviving the shock of seeing whatever freaky chiz her mom had gotten into now.

As the movie went on and the pair watched in curious and stunned silence, it began to dawn on Sam that, as weird as this was, the longer it continued the less likely it appeared to be one of her mom's normal entertainment choices. Pam might have wound up with this from the time she was dating that drama professor, Sam realized. She began to relax a bit.

"I had no idea my mom snuck into one of your family reunions with a video camera, Benson," Sam joked as she laid down across the sofa with her legs propped across Freddie's lap.

"What are you doing?"

"Calf twitches. Start rubbin', little boy."

"And why would I do that?" Freddie demanded.

"'Cause you're sooo good at it," she cooed in a mock seductive tone.

Freddie glared balefully as he began rubbing her leg. "So," he asked, trying to make conversation, "there's a whole bunch of these _European Fun Guys_ movies, right?"

"Yeah," Sam replied apprehensively.

"What the heck are they about?"

"Well," Sam lied as she gestured toward the screen, "they're about, you know, this." Whatever that was.

"I get they're European," Freddie mused. "These two hobos – Vladimir and Estragon – are sorta Euro-ish names, and this Godot guy they keep talking about sounds like he must be French or something – but we've been watching this for thirty minutes and they're not doing **anything**. They just keep falling over and hitting each other and standing around and stuff. It's funny, but there doesn't seem to be any point to it. How do you keep that up for a whole movie? Or fourteen movies? At some point you'd think they'd alienate the audience or something."

"Stranger things have happened," Sam chuckled as Pozzo and his leash-bound assistant rejoined the two hobos after a lengthy absence. The leash was comically short now, and Pozzo suddenly seemed to be randomly blind. They kept flailing stupidly and crashing into each other.

"What's so funny?" Freddie asked as Sam continued to chuckle.

"Accidental violence. It's the best kind."

"You're sick."

"I prefer 'differently humored.' Besides, you know you love it." Sam playfully tugged his hair and unconsciously pulled herself closer to him.

A few minutes later, as the movie ended, Freddie stared at the blank TV screen with his hands on his head, stunned. "Wait – that was **it**?"

"Looks like it." Sam idly batted her foot at Freddie's hand to make him continue rubbing it.

"But –" he resumed rubbing, "– that Godot person never even showed up! Nothing happened! It's like the whole thing was a joke I didn't get."

"At least it passed the time."

"That's what the hobos kept saying!" Freddie grumbled. "Well, at least I know not to waste any more time on any of the other _European Fun Guys_ movies," he reflected.

_Mission accomplished_, Sam thought.

"Hey, Freddie – smells like dinner's ready."

"Well? Should we go?"

"Yeah. Let's go."

For the next few minutes, they didn't move from the sofa.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Author's Note: <strong>And you thought you were finally going to get _European Fun Guys_, didn't you? This is rated "T," not "M," after all. I wonder if the term "Rickroll" can apply to 20th-century postmodern existentialist literature. _"Waiting For Godot_-roll" just doesn't have a catchy ring to it._


	15. Shut Up, Amygdala!

_**Disclaimer: **I don't own iCarly, and I don't own the characters. I'm also very glad to say that I don't own any tickets to the Bonnaroo Music Festival, either._

* * *

><p>"PINEAL GLAND! What the heck do you think you're doing?"<p>

"Making a heaping mess of melatonin, Mr. Cerebellum, sir."

"Well who told you to do that?"

"Hypothalamus – that's the brain for me. Same as always."

"HYPOTHALAMUS! FRONT AND CENTER!"

"Yo."

"What's going on here?"

"Sleep. Now."

"Why now?"

"For further information, consult your pineal gland."

"Already did that. Lousy squirt told me to see you."

"Oh . . . uh . . . Try the brain stem, then?"

"Oh, crap . . ."

There were few things the cerebellum hated more than having to consult that loopy brain stem. Dealing with that touchy-feeley amygdala might have been even more irritating, but that was about it.

"Hello, brain stem . . . HELLO, BRAIN STEM . . . Hello? Anybody home?"

"Dude," the brain stem slowly answered at long last.

"What's going on here?"

"Sleeping, dude. Dreams. Gotta get awesome ideas from somewhere."

"You know I'm perfectly capable of creative thinking in my structured fashion!"

"That's just, like, your opinion, man."

The amygdala piped in: "Oooh! Are we dreaming, guys?"

"Shut up, amygdala!"

"That's no way to talk to a lady, cerebellum. Take a load off, babe, and trip with me though the magic land of imagination."

"Why, thank you, brain stem. Guess what? That sweet, adorable boy's still here with us! Momma LIKEY. Let's put him in the dream!"

"Far out, babe. Keep on truckin'."

"Shut up, amygdala!"

"And let's put in some roses, some incense, and some candlelight . . . so romantic . . ."

"Awesomeness."

"SHUT UP! Brain stem, I order you to put something distracting and unromantic in there! Fried chicken! Tacos! Put that dorky boy in some stupid and embarrassing outfit! And how about some Gary Numan songs? That'll kill the mood."

"Trippy, dude. 'Here in my car, I feel safest of all, I can lock all my doors, it's the only way to live. In cars' —"

"Ooh, cars! Let's make this dream really overt and be parked with him in a car somewhere, and we'll put the moves on him. Stare into those big brown eyes of his, reach over and gently stroke his cheek, lean in, and one thing can lead to another and —"

"SHUT UP, AMYGDALA! I ORDER YOU TO SHUT UP!"

"You can't shout me down forever, you know."

"Like hell I can't!"

"Cerebellum, dude, chillax," the brain stem advised. "Keep this up and you're gonna end up putting us all in a nuthouse someday. You should try embracing what the amygdala tells you, man, instead of shouting stuff down. She knows the score, dude. Know what might help you get in touch with feelings more, man? Light up some patchouli, put on some String Cheese Incident, and try some primal scream therapy . . ."

"STUFF IT!"

"Well done, man, well done."

"How did I end up with you freaks? I swear, if I didn't need crap like breathing and circulation, I'd ditch you in a second, brain stem! You know what I oughta do?"

"Score some tickets to Bonnaroo?"

The amygdala decided it was time to go for the cerebellum's jugular. "What was that were we thinking of when we tested out the showerhead earlier? The way he smells, that grin of his, the way his eyes catch the light, wrapped in his arms . . . That and the feeling of satin —"

"I'm ignoring you, amygdala."

"So many emotions . . . sensations . . . Face it, you want him BAD —"

"STOP IT! STOP IT NOW!"

"Nobody puts amygdala in a corner!"

The brain stem decided a helpful suggestion was in order to calm things down: "Eff it, dude. Let's go bowling."

Sam had somehow managed to drift off in the short time she and Freddie remained in a state of Beckettian catatonia on the couch, and her head bobbed languidly onto his shoulder. Freddie, looking confused, nudged her.

"Sam."

"Mmmm," she moaned, as she dreamily nuzzled in closer.

"Sam!"

"thebrainstemabides."

"SAM!"

Sam shot up, startled.

"Wha? Huh? Oh, hey, Fredlerch."

"You fell asleep."

She rubbed her eyes. "I just had the weirdest dream . . . I was in the parking lot at El Taco Guapo. It was night, and there were all these guys wearing satin cloaks with basket strainers on their heads, and they had some crazy procession going, carrying lit candles and these big icon frescoes of Gary Numan. You were there, wearing an Easter bonnet," she continued with a brief scowl, "and everything smelled like roses and fried chicken . . . And I really wanna go bowling for some weird reason . . . Do I smell patchouli?" she rambled drowsily.

Freddie regarded her with an expression of mingled apprehension and curiosity, as though a colorfully patterned poisonous snake had just crossed his path in the woods.

"Anyway . . . I think the food's done," he said, warily changing the subject.

"Oh. Far out."

"'Far out?'" he chuckled amusedly.

"Don't know; words just kinda popped in my head. Let's mosey," she said, getting up while pointing in the direction of the kitchen and walking toward it.

Sam poured several ladles full of food from the crock pot into a large mixing bowl.

"That oughta be enough," she said with a smile, and proceeded to carry the mixing bowl back to the living room sofa.

Freddie halted in the middle of the kitchen.

"So, wait," he wondered. "You didn't get any out for me?"

Sam, who had taken the ladle with her, jammed it into the mixing bowl and and began eating straight from the ladle. "You got arms. Use 'em," she muttered.

Freddie shook his head, fished a cereal bowl out of one of the cupboards, peered into the bottom of the crock pot, and scooped out the remainder with a small spoon.

"So, do you think the wall's dry enough by now?"

"Should be," Sam muttered through a mouthful of beans and rice.

"Oh, wow. This turned out really good," Freddie said as he took his first bite while standing in the kitchen.

"Well, yeah," Sam said in a huff from the sofa. "You sound like you don't think I know what I'm doing."

"I didn't mean it that way — not everything has to be an insult, you know," Freddie snapped back as he approached the living room with his puny bowl in tow.

"Sorry," Sam said with a roll of her eyes. "You don't have to be so thin-skinned, you know."

"Wait," Freddie said with a sly smile as he sat on the opposite end of the couch, "who's calling who thin-skinned here? I just said this is really good, and you fallaciously thought I was being mean."

Sam dropped her ladle into the bowl as a look of surprise crossed her face. "I what?"

"Thought I was being mean."

"No, right before that."

"I said this is really good."

"No, I mean the other part. That word."

"Fallaciously?"

"That's blue of you, Fredward," she said admiringly as she playfully smacked his leg. "I'm impressed."

"It means 'mistakenly,'" Freddie said confusedly.

Sam's face froze, as did her hand on his arm. "Oh."

"Why? What did you think it meant?"

"Uh, nothing."

Sam finally realized she'd left her hand resting on Freddie's knee, and she quickly pulled it back while she abruptly changed the subject.

"So, I got all the tiles we'll need in a box in the closet," she said.

"I was wondering about that," Freddie replied. "The only ones I saw earlier was what got smashed when you widened the hole in the wall this morning."

He scooped the last bit of food in his bowl onto his spoon.

"So . . . Lifted them from the same construction site as the drywall?" he asked.

"Nah. Swiped 'em from a different job site," she said with a grin. "Should look really nice, though, once they're up on the wall. Still hungry?"

"Well, you didn't leave much for me," Freddie answered as he stared into his empty bowl.

"Here." Sam dumped several large scoops from her bowl into Freddie's as he eyed her quizzically.

"What?" she asked with a nervous chuckle.

"You were already eating that."

"Oh, come on! Like my spit's never been in your mouth before," Sam quickly retorted before she realized what she was saying.

Freddie's facial expression contorted to one of a person who'd just caught sight of Medusa. "I thought we were never to speak of it again," he said quietly.

"What's the point?" Sam asked. "That cat's been outta the bag for a long time now. It's safe to joke about." She paused thoughtfully. "Got it outta the way for both of us, so it's not like we'd ever do that again, anyway," she said with a grin that looked to Freddie that may have been slightly forced.

"Got a point there," Freddie agreed as he willed himself to peer intently into his bowl while several tiny beads of sweat formed on his forehead. He idly stabbed his beans and rice repeatedly with his spoon as he felt the awkwardness of the moment envelop them both.

"Hey-ey Frothy!" Sam shouted a little too enthusiastically as her cat hopped up onto the sofa to sniff at the remaining food.

Frothy arched his back and head-butted Sam's hand. She petted the cat intently. "Who's momma's little purry-wurry kitty-witty! Ba-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa!" she intoned as she blew a raspberry on the cat's back.

_Well, this is weirder than usual_, Freddie thought to himself as he took another bite.

Frothy extricated himself from Sam's all-to-fervent grip and hopped awkwardly from the couch to the coffee table. Before Freddie could stop him, the cat had shoved his face into what was left of the food and began eating.

"I guess that finishes dinner," Freddie observed. "Should we go tile the wall?"

"Let's do it!" Sam yelled in a comically low voice, sounding immensely relieved while thrusting a fist in the air.


End file.
